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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



m 



The Front Line 

of the 

Sunday School Movement 



THE LINE OF THE VANGUARD OF SUNDAY 

SCHOOL PROGRESS, WITH A GLIMPSE 

OF IDEALS BEYOND 



BY 

Rev. F. N. PELOUBET, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF " SELECT NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

LESSONS," "TEACHERS' COMMENTARIES," AND "SUGGESTIVE 

ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE NEW TESTAMENT," ETC. 




W. A. WILDE COMPANY 
BOSTON . . AND . . CHICAGO 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies ri'sceived 

JAN J6 1905 

Copyritfiic entry 

/Ifirr. /// k?oy> 

cuss Jf XXC. No; 

7 0/ 3?1L 

COPY 6. 






COPYRIGHT, I904 

By W. A. WILDE COMPANY 

All rights reserved 



THE FRONT LINE OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



FOREWORD 

When my long-time friend the president of Bangor 
Theological Seminary requested me to give a course of 
Lectures on the Sunday School to the students, two rea- 
sons were especially influential in deciding me to accept 
his invitation. 

The first was a desire to express in some degree the 
gratitude I owe to this Seminary for the training I re- 
ceived at its hands. Not the least of the providential 
blessings which have come unexpectedly into my life was 
the loving guidance which brought me to Bangor and its 
Theological Seminary: 

I congratulate the Seminary for its high ideals, for 
setting them before the students and saying : " There is 
the portrait of the minister whom the churches need, and 
whom they want. He stands continually before you — 
study him ; set your faces in that direction ; the whole 
training of the seminary course is to help you to become 
that man." 

I congratulate the students on their privilege of enter- 
ing the ministry. 

The greatest joy a life-work can bring belongs to the 
Preacher who preaches the Gospel because he loves the 
Gospel, loves its Giver, and loves his fellow-men. 

The greatest joy of the Preacher is that, like his Master, 
he can also be a Teacher. 

3 



4 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT 

The greatest joy of the Teacher lies in the teaching 
of youth. 

The other reason was a desire to express in book form 
some things that lay upon my heart. 

One of the largest elements in the ideal of the Preacher, 
as of the Teacher, is the shepherding of the lambs of 
the flock ; and by learning how to shepherd the lambs 
he learns how to shepherd the whole flock. It has been 
said that if you convert an adult you convert a unit ; but 
if you convert a child you convert a multiplication table ; 
that the star of Bethlehem, the star of hope, still stands 
over the Child and the Home ; that " man was the conun- 
drum of the eighteenth century, woman the conundrum 
of the nineteenth century," but the problem of the twen- 
tieth century is the child. 

" Columbus," said Chauncey Depew, " was a dreamer, 
but he dreamt of new worlds. He was admiral of the 
ocean because he was made Christopher Columbus to carry 
Christ across the sea." Columbus found the new world 
of which he dreamed ; and it is through the child — the 
child in the Home, the child in the Sunday School, the 
child in the Church, that we whose work it is to be 
Christophers, bearers of the Christ to the children, shall 
find the new earth and new heavens of John's apocalyptic 
vision. 

One of the chief dangers of the scholarly temperament 
as distinguished from the teaching temperament, and of 
young ministers fresh from their seminary studies, lies 
in the living, moving, and having their being in a differ- 
ent atmosphere from that in which their people live and 
move and have their being ; with different subjects of 
intellectual interest, seen from different standpoints and 



FOREWORD 5 

with a different terminology. Their sermons are not, as 
is sometimes said, " over the heads of the people " ; they 
are simply one side of them, outside of their sphere of 
interest and thought, on another plane, and therefore inef- 
fective. Thus Ian Maclaren in the British Weekly describes 
" one of the chief futilities of the pulpit, — preaching on 
academic subjects, which interest the preacher very much 
and about which the people do not care one brass pin, or 
wearying himself with vain controversies which he thinks 
are most exciting, but which bore the people to death." 

There is not the slightest danger of being too learned 
or too intellectual. The preacher, as the teacher, must 
gain all the knowledge he can, fill his treasure-house with 
things new and old, search every realm of thought for the 
very best, have the holiest and highest experiences, see the 
loftiest ideals ; but his real business is to bring these things 
into contact with the daily life of his people, translate them 
into their vernacular, and adapt them to their needs. The 
choice little volume of Patterson Du Bois on the Point of 
Contact in Teaching is equally good for the preacher and 
the teacher. 

Now the children are among the best means of getting 
at this "point of contact," through the Sunday School, 
through the Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth 
Leagues, Young People's Unions, the Pastor's Class, the 
Home ; just as it has been said that the " Kindergarten 
is the leaven that has been transforming all elementary 
education." 

" The science of the century kneels by the cradle of the child." 
" And a little child shall lead them." 

If I were just entering upon my ministerial work, I 
would as a rule go to the Sunday School, and remain 



6 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT 

through the session ; I would teach the classes of chil- 
dren rather than adult Bible classes ; I would not usu- 
ally become the regular teacher of any one class, but 
would be a substitute teacher, teaching every class in the 
school as opportunity offered, thus becoming acquainted 
with every scholar in the most helpful way. 

As I now look back over my uneventful life, more and 
more clearly does the Sunday School Work flow through- 
out its whole length like a river of light. Its tiniest rill 
in the mists of years gone by I still see in one of the 
earliest pictures my memory holds, as I behold myself a 
little boy of four years sitting beside my father, while he 
taught a class of young men in the old Brick Church in 
New York City. 

One of nine children, brought up in an atmosphere 
intensely religious, literary and educational, both theoreti- 
cal and practical, with a mother who had a gift for telling 
Bible stories, with plenty of manual training in my father's 
factory and garden, with Bible reading and prayer five 
times a day, with children always in my own family even 
till to-day, there has been at least an opportunity of know- 
ing something about both children and the Bible. 

Then I had some of the best academy teachers boys 
could enjoy, some experience in teaching in a boys' school 
and as school committee in village schools for many 
years. 

Always teaching in the Sunday School, at times teach- 
ing the same lesson three or four times in a week to old 
and young, with growing Sunday Schools in each parish, 
where the authorities permitted me to experiment freely, 
I at length came to the time, twenty years ago, when I 
was compelled to make a choice between being the pastor 



FOREWORD 7 

of a single church, or of giving myself up wholly to work 
for the Sunday School. 

Since then that has been my life's work and joy. At 
home and abroad, through books and observation, through 
continual practice in teaching, through a study of every 
variety of school within my reach, through an unusual op- 
portunity for acquaintance with Bible scholars and secular 
educators, I have tried with open mind and eyes to learn 
the best things for the Sunday School. The work itself 
has been my "Schools and Schoolmasters." I have tried 
to put in practice the theories I have held, unlike a good 
friend of mine who kept his watch with scientific exact- 
ness to the second, but was never known to be on time. 

Therefore, what I bring in these lectures is peculiarly 
the outgrowth of experience gained through long years of 
study and observation and never ending toil. The book 
is almost an autobiography of one whose life has been 
spent in slowly climbing toward ideals not yet realized, 
and who is still climbing toward the distant goal. 

No one can be more conscious than myself of how im- 
perfect are the results, of what better things are near at 
hand, of the fact that all the results here given are' but 
the lower steps of the golden stairway reaching into shin- 
ing clouds which hide the unknown heights. May you 

" read between the lines 
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs." 



"Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended, but one 
thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching 
forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal 
unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 



" Domine Deus, quaecumque dixi de Tuo, agnoscant et tui. Si qua 
de meo, et Tu ignosce et tui." 



"Ta TradrjfjLdTa fJLaOrjfJLara." 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

FOREWORD 3 

CHAPTER 

I. THE FRONT LINE 11 

II. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF SOME OF THE STRATEGIC 

POINTS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FRONT LINE . 24 

III. THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 47 

IV. HOW CAN BUSINESS MEN AND BUSY WOMEN BEST 

PREPARE THEIR SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON ? . . 70 
V. TEACHER-TRAINING, "AN EDUCATION FOR THE EDU- 
CATOR" 90 

VI. A STUDY IN GRADING . . 125 

VII. SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE, AND ITS 

REMEDY 159 

VIII. SIGNS OF GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY EX- 
PRESSED IN ORGANIZATIONS FOR THAT PURPOSE . 179 
IX. METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 

THE HISTORIC METHOD 195 

X. BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. PART II. 

VARIOUS METHODS . 220 

XI. SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT . . .252 



9 



THE FRONT LINE OF THE SUNDAY 
SCHOOL MOVEMENT 



THE FRONT LINE 

The Front Line of the Sunday School is the line formed 
by the best things which in its every department have 
been tried and proved successful. Not the best untested 
theories, not the loftiest millennial imaginings, not the 
brightest ideals for ideal circumstances, but the best 
things actually attained in some schools, the brightest 
ideals that have been made real, the actual encampments 
of the vanguard of the Sunday School army. 

The work of the Sunday School is carried on under an 
almost infinite variety of circumstances, — in city and in 
country, in large schools and in small schools ; in schools 
with every advantage money and talent can give, and in 
schools where poverty, ignorance, neglect, and opposition 
place every conceivable obstacle in the way ; with every 
variety of talent, with different ideals, with diverse prob- 
lems worked out with differing results, with emphasis on 
different methods, some having attained to great profi- 
ciency in one direction, others in another. All these 

11 



12 THE FRONT LINE 

multiplied together in geometrical progression produce an 
endless variety of methods and results. The best of all 
these things form the Front Line. 

The greatest need of the Sunday Schools as a whole is 
not the invention of new methods and theories, neces- 
sary as these are, but that they should all be made to 
see the Front Line, and that they should all begin their 
march up toward it. They often do not move on be- 
cause they do not know the existence of good things 
toward which they might go, and which are easily within 
their reach. 

Almost every Sunday School I visit has worked out 
something of value. But almost without exception there 
are things which other schools could teach them to their 
advantage if only they had their eyes open to the Front 
Line along the whole horizon. 

A bright and most devoted superintendent of one of 
the largest and best-equipped Sunday Schools in London 
told me that he had been in that school as scholar, teacher, 
or superintendent almost all his life, and had rarely seen 
another school. His school, admirable as it was, told the 
same story. I have heard of other superintendents nearer 
home who have been equally faithful, whose praises have 
been sung to the same tune. While this may be safe for 
some men of remarkable genius, yet for the great body of 
superintendents it is a knell rather than a psean. How 
are they to know what is best for their own schools unless 
they see what others have done ; and how are they to 
train up successors unless they sometimes throw the 
burden on their assistants. The prayer for them and for 
most Sunday Schools is that of Elisha at Dothan : Lord, 
open Thou their eyes, that they may see — 



THE FRONT LINE 13 

" See the helpers God has sent, 

And how Life's rugged mountain side 
Is white with many an angel tent." 

The Power of the Front Line is admirably illustrated 
by the Christian Endeavor Movement. Before that move- 
ment was begun, the training of the young people in the 
prayer meeting and church work was done chiefly by the 
individual pastor with little help from the experience of 
others. I well remember what hard work it was. Now 
every one, whether belonging to the Christian Endeavor, 
Epworth League, or the Union, or not, can have help from 
the experience of thousands of others in every part of the 
land. Books and papers reporting these experiences are an 
inspiration to better things ; and the fact that they have 
been tried and proved removes many objections which 
would otherwise obstruct their adoption. 

The most successful way of introducing a new measure 
is to be able to say, " This has been tried in place after 
place, and proved a success." I remember well when 
I first stood at the foot of the Eiffel tower, and gazing 
up the dizzy height saw the elevators running up and down, 
a thousand feet, how I hesitated whether to trust myself 
to them. But when I learned that they had already car- 
ried thirteen million passengers without a single accident, 
I said to myself, " This has been tested and proved thirteen 
million times ; I will trust myself to it without a question." 

Mr. Bryce, in his fair-minded and illuminating book on 
America, states that the best things in that wonderful 
and noble instrument, the Constitution of the United 
States, are the ones which had been previously tried in 
the state constitutions, and proved good by the test of 
experience ; while the least valuable portions were those 



14 THE FRONT LINE 

that were thought out for the first time at the assembly 
for the making of the constitution. 

According to William T. Harris, United States Com- 
missioner of Education : — 

" It is only in the history of education that one sees the 
outcome of reforms, and can understand their strong and 
weak points. Nearly all present practices that have be- 
come established have a history of trials and experiments, 
and one who studies their growth in the past is taking the 
best way to discover what reforms should be taken up as 
the next best step in the present. 

" It is not likely that more than five per cent of new 
experiments initiated in education will succeed in estab- 
lishing themselves as of value to educational methods ; 
the remaining ninety-five per cent will fail. It is so in 
new business ventures ; . . . but the five per cent of new 
experiments which succeed may add, and do add, enough 
of value to compensate for the waste involved in the 
other ninety-five per cent of experiments. Even if we 
grant that of all criticisms and suggestions of reformers, 
only five per cent bring fruit in the form of experiments that 
prove anything either positive or negative, it still remains 
an important fact that criticisms and new experiments 
keep alive the work of education, just as in other matters." 

The Front Line is the record of this five per cent result- 
ant from all experiments in improving the Sunday School. 
It is like the small Isaian " Remnant " sifted from the 
Jewish nation by conflict and trial, but which in the end 
was the means of realizing his prophecies of the New 
Nation. 

Cross-fertilization. — In that most enlightening book, 
The Ideal School, by Preston W. Search, there is much 



THE FRONT LINE 15 

that is peculiarly applicable to those who are seeking the 
Ideal Sunday School. 

He says : — 

"There is scarcely a single feature of all these ideals 
presented, no matter how inaccessible they may seem, 
which is not supported by something tested and proven, 
to a greater or less degree, in the experience of Schools. 
If these fragments of success can be found, no matter how 
scattered, then an Ideal School is the direct product of 
their coordination in a single system. 

" The ideal School will never be the product of any 
one person, nor will be of any one system, nor any one 
point of view." 

For as Mr. Search says again, " It is cross-fertilization 
and not grafting which has given us our richest varieties 
of fruits and flowers." 

This cross-fertilization, which has had such a develop- 
ment within the last few years as almost to revolutionize 
the progress of horticulture, is the method of the Front 
Line. 

Great things have already been attained in various 
lines and various places, much more than is easily realized 
by those who are in the midst of the process, who do not 
remember the contrast between the best of the old and 
the best of the new in the midst of the conflict of the 
slowly dawning day. 

" ' Oh, where is the sea? ' the fishes cried, 
As they swam the crystal clearness through. 
* We've heard from of old of the ocean's tide, 
And we long to look on the waters blue. 
The wise ones speak of the infinite sea ; 
Oh, who can tell us if such there be ? '" 



16 THE FRONT LINE 

This is almost universally the case in great moral and 
intellectual progress. It was for this reason the disciples 
were unable to recognize the " times and seasons " of 
the coming of the Kingdom of God. So Green's Short 
History of the English People shows that while in the 
Wars of the Roses the battles and contentions of the two 
parties filled the visible horizon that made the records 
of history, there was going on unnoticed at the time 
the mighty undercurrent which was the making of 
England. 

The Front Line is the best condition for further advance- 
ment. The loftiest mountains do not rise abruptly from 
the plains, but out of table-lands and foothills. The great 
literature and art of Greece, the brilliant writings of the 
Augustan age, Shakespeare and Milton the great lights 
of the Elizabethan age, the best things of the world, have 
not grown out of ignorant, uncultured ages, but were 
mountain peaks rising out of intense literary activity, 
and eras of a revival of letters. Among a vast number 
of great and noble men, they towered above all, and 
overlook the centuries. What others did in the past 
made them possible. 

It is said that once the elder Professor Silliman of Yale 
was sitting in the audience while his son was delivering a 
lecture, when an enthusiastic man close behind him whis- 
pered, "Why, he beats the old gent." The "old gent" 
turning toward him whispered in reply. " He ought to ; 
he stands on my shoulders." The Present is so great 
because it stands on the shoulders of the Past. " We are 
heirs of all the ages." 

Renan, not long before his death, said, " I fear that the 
work of the Twentieth Century will consist in taking out 



THE FRONT LINE 17 

of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent ideas which 
the Nineteenth Century has heedlessly thrown into it." 
That is true partly because in our eagerness after new 
things, we are apt to go to extremes and forget the other 
essentials which the past has evolved ; and partly because 
the previous century had not climbed high enough to 
make it possible to realize its ideals, and materialize its 
visions. According to Professor Home in his recent 
book on The Philosophy of Education, "Progress in 
knowledge of whatever kind must always come only 
from him who is already familiar with what has been 
done in his own field : In our universities scholars become 
abreast of their fields, they thus know where to begin 
original work, and so human knowledge grows." 

Like the rower in a boat, we look backward that we may 
go forward. 

The reason therefore for emphasizing the Front Line is 
not simply because of its immeasurable advantage to the 
Sunday Schools, but also because it is from this vantage- 
ground that the greatest progress in Sunday School work 
can be made. The object lessons of the best things 
already accomplished, made known throughout the whole 
Sunday School world, will continually suggest, to one or 
another, new and better things, to be proclaimed to all. 
There will thus be a steady, continuous, onward move- 
ment of the Front Line. 

" The goal of yesterday shall become the starting-point 
of to-day." 

From these Pisgah heights we can gaze upon the Prom- 
ised Land of the Sunday School of the future. From these 
Bethels rises the dream ladder toward heaven with the 
angels of grace and glory upon it, and 



18 THE FRONT LINE 

" Still, through our paltry stir and strife, 
Glows down the wished ideal, 
And Longing moulds in clay what Life 
Carves in the marble real." 

It is our business to see visions and dream dreams, as it 

was a necessary element in the progress of the early 
Church. To Renan's "At bottom every ideal is Utopia," 
a baseless dream, Martineau replies " At bottom every ideal 
is an inspiration." And Ruskin says: " Utopianism is 
one of the Devil's pet words . . . whenever you hear 
a man dissuading you from attempting to do well on 
the ground that perfection is Utopian, beware of that 
man." 

For the best things you have ever done, your highest 
experiences, your greatest sacrifices, the noblest ecstasies 
of love, the seasons when your soul like Paul's has been 
lifted to the third heaven, — these are Front Lines of 
your life, keeping before you the ideals which are possible 
to you, and from which you can see visions beyond. 
Revivals of religion, fresh enthusiasms for education and 
for missions, new devotion to character and to Christ and 
to the Kingdom of God, are for the Church, as the greatest 
men and best deeds, the victories over wrong, the noblest 
enthusiasms of righteousness, are for the country, heights 
gained by some, and therefore inspirations for all, once 
attained and therefore to be attained again. Carlyle 
was right when in his Frederick the Great he said : 
" Once risen into this divine white heat of temper, were it 
only for a season and not again, it is henceforth consider- 
able through all its remaining history. Nations are bene- 
fited for ages by being thrown once into divine white heat 
in this manner. And no nation that has not had such 



THE FKONT LINE 19 

divine paroxysms at any time is apt to come to much." 
Revival heights bless us evermore ; and when they have 
passed away, and we have come again into our ordinary 
routine, a new light still shines on the daily life, the level 
is higher, the ideal is nobler. 

We will save ourselves from many an hour of dis- 
couragement, if we will keep in mind Matthew Arnold's 
separation of the hour of insight from the hours of labor. 

" We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire that in the heart resides ; 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides ; 
But tasks in hours of insight willed 
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled ." 

The glimpses of the mountain top will come only now and 
then as we toil up the rocky slopes, through dark forests, 
but we know the summits are there, and every step is 
bringing us nearer the goal. 

The whole world has been inspired, and moved upward 
and onward by the glorious visions of Isaiah, by the 
ideal of Christ as well as by the atoning power of his 
death, and by the pictures of the New Heavens and the 
New Earth revealed to John, toward which the world is 
ever moving more rapidly as each century rolls on. 

In lesser degrees, but still with power, have the ideals 
of Plato's Republic, the Garden of the Hesperides of the 
Greeks, the New Atlantis, Richardson's City of Health, 
and all ideal pictures of the Golden Age, helped to hasten 
on the good time coming. 

In the words of Maxwell, " No poet's dream has ever 
yet embodied the climax and consummation of human 



20 THE FRONT LINE 

capabilities ; but each new dream is a prophecy of the 
future, and is freshly watering the seeds of realization. 
It has been truly said, ' The poetic idealism of to-day will 
be the prose reality of to-morrow.' " 

The same truth is expressed in Mrs. Preston's poem : 
"God never permitted us to form a theory too beautiful 
for His power to make practical." 

" Men take the pure ideals of their souls, 

And lock them fast away, 
Nor ever dream that things so beautiful 

Are fit for every day ; 
So, counterfeits pass current in their lives, 

And stones they give for bread ; 
And starvingly and fearing] y they walk 

Through life, among the dead ; 
Though never yet was pure ideal 
Too fair for them to make the real. 

" Thine early dreams, which came in ' shapes of light,' 

Came, bearing prophecy — 
Commissioned sweetly to unfold 

Thy possible to thee. 
Fear not to build thine eyrie in the heights, 

Bright with celestial day ; 
And trust thyself unto thine inmost soul 

In simple faith alway. 
And God shall make divinely real 
The highest forms of thy ideal." 

All this, applies to the Sunday School not only because 
it illustrates a principle but because for the most rapid 
progress of the Sunday School all agencies for education 
must move together, create an atmosphere, a trend, a cur- 
rent, all pressing toward the same great end, — the day 
school, the church, the home, the press, the young people's 



THE FRONT LINE 21 

societies, the Christian associations of the colleges. One 
cannot do its best except in cooperation with the others. 
A dead church cannot long have a live Sunday School, for 
either the Sunday School will join the dead, or the church 
will become alive. Interest in secular education is sure to 
create interest in religious education ; and equally certain, 
yea, more powerfully, will deeper interest in the religious 
life and education of the young impart new interest to the 
day schools. 

One of the most hopeful signs of the times is that feel- 
ing of unrest and criticism of the Sunday School, and 
dissatisfaction with things as they are, which may be char- 
acterized by the motto of an organization of men, referred 
to by one of the speakers at the first convention of the 
Religious Education Association, called The Restless 
Club : — 

" Anywhere but where we are." 

" Nothing could be worse than this." 

" The best is good enough for me." 

Any one who has been in close contact with educators 
and educational matters during the last ten or fifteen years, 
can recognize the truth of the description. Never before 
has there been such a conflict of opinions, such a storm of 
criticism, such a condemnation of the established order, 
such a whirl of new theories, such a battle of ideas, such a 
series of experiments. It seems as if there had returned to 
earth the spirit of the Greek god Momus, who found fault 
with everything in heaven above and the earth beneath, 
even with Venus because her golden slippers made so much 
noise when she walked. Every new scheme condemns the 
old. The next condemns them both. " Whatever is is 
wrong." 



22 THE FRONT LINE 

Then we turn to the literature and listen to the critics 
of secular education, and hear what is said about our 
world-renowned Day Schools, and lo, the criticisms of the 
Sunday School are but a summer breeze compared with 
the storm hurled against secular education and its methods. 
It would not be fair or true to quote the Oriental proverb, 
" The dog barks, but the caravan passes on," for the critics 
and reformers are among the greatest and wisest men of 
the age. But it is true that the caravan must pass on till 
a better is prepared, the railroad must continue to carry 
its passengers till the new one is built. 

Now the first thing to be noted concerning this state of 
things is, that it is apt to give a false impression, as if the 
storm-cloud were sweeping away the whole landscape 
instead of vitalizing and improving it. President Lin- 
coln saw the fixed stars through the showers of meteors 
which the farmer thought presaged the end of all things. 
There has been and still is a wonderfully good work 
going on in Sunday School and day school, better work 
and with greater success than ever before. They had 
their part in making all the Christian men and educated 
men in the country. The sun has spots, some of them 
large enough to take in several worlds as large as ours, 
but the sun shines serenely on, bestowing its light and 
heat, creating power and beauty, as if no spot had ever 
been known. 

The other thing to be noted is, that all this restless 
criticism means life, means that the Sunday School and 
day school are not dead, but living, not standing still, but 
marching side by side toward better things. They are 
not behind the age, only as the wind is behind the ship 
that makes it go, only as the sun is behind the dawn and 



THE FRONT LINE 23 

brings the day. They are in the vigor, and stir and 
change of springtime that promise summer flowers and 
autumn fruits. 

" They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of 

truth. 
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ; we ourselves must Pilgrims be; 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter 

sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." 



II 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF SOME OF THE STRATEGIC 
POINTS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FRONT LINE 

Befoee taking up in greater detail a few subjects which 
seem most important and are now receiving earnest dis- 
cussion in Sunday School circles, I desire to stand by your 
side and show you, as in a panorama, the whole long Front 
Line of the Sunday School, the vanguard of its advancing 
army. At best the view will be imperfect ; others, from 
different standpoints, will wish to add or subtract ; and 
the line is continually changing so rapidly that new 
things have come within my vision since I began these 
lectures. 

Still it is well to see as accurately as we can in one 
bird's-eye view what seem to be the best things as yet 
attained by the Sunday School, adopting as our own a 
toast given to Wellesley College, " May her ideals always 
be just beyond her grasp." 

In seeking to bring the schools up to the Front Line, it 
is possible that some notes from the log-book of my experi- 
ence may be of service in helping the reformer to avoid 
certain rocks on which more than one has been wrecked 
or suffered loss. 

1. It is wise to show the possible good to be attained, 
and to lay but small emphasis upon the condemnation of 
the past. 

24 



A bird's-eye view 25 

Proctor the astronomer, in his Familiar Science Studies, 
relates the story of an Oriental potentate who " dreamt 
that all his teeth fell out, and when he was told that he 
was to lose all his relatives, he slew the indiscreet inter- 
preter ; but when another and cleverer interpreter told 
him that his dream promised long life, and that he would 
survive all his relatives, he made the man who thus pleas- 
antly interpreted the omen many rich and handsome pres- 
ents." Both counsellors said the same thing except that 
one pointed out the evil and the other the good. And 
you will find that very often the success or the failure of 
your plans for reforming men or Sunday Schools depends 
on whether you place your emphasis on the bad to be 
removed or on the good to be cherished ; on the errors 
and mistakes of the past, or on the picture of better 
things ; your back to the night and your face to the 
dawn. 

2. It is best not to make too sudden and revolutionary- 
changes. The opinions of most men are changed as a 
ship reverses its course by so large a circle that the pas- 
sengers have no idea that they are sailing in exactly the 
opposite direction from that in which they started. 

When I was expecting to preach in foreign lands, a wise 
missionary gave me this good advice, " Do not make any 
criticisms on what you see in the mission field for at least 
a year." That advice has stood by me ever since. It is 
good advice for every minister when he enters upon a new 
field. 

3. Be both conservative and radical, but have a clear 
idea of what these terms really mean in practical life. 
A conservative is not one who merely stands still. He is 
not a mummy ; he is not typified by Sancho Panza asleep 



26 THE FRONT LINE 

on his saddle, propped up by four sticks, while the robbers 
had driven his beast from under him. The conservative 
is one who moves along the regular roads, the beaten 
paths which the wise men of old have trod, and he can go 
as fast as he will. The radical is one who is seeking out 
new ways, exploring the forests for better paths, experi- 
menting for something new and better. And though the 
pathway of progress is thickly strewn on either side with 
radical failures, yet the radicals are also continually show- 
ing us better ways, and when they are found, the conser- 
vative walks therein. 

4. Another great secret of success in hastening the adop- 
tion of better things is found in hiding yourself behind 
the cause. Let others have the honor while you do the 
work ; let others be the figurehead while you are the 
unseen screw that makes the ship go. There are those 
who never work earnestly unless they carry the flag at 
the head of the procession ; let them carry it, while you 
secretly suggest the line of march. Work through the 
constituted authorities. The failure to do this has 
wrecked many a good cause. Keep yourself out of sight. 
Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and 
then all these things shall be added unto you. 

In surveying the Sunday School world for the strategic 
points in its front line we would note : — 

I. That it is Open-minded to Everything Good. — It de- 
sires to learn, it is seeking the best. As a whole the 
Sunday School does welcome every experiment and every 
effort to discover better things, and bids Godspeed to all 
the prophets who see the possibilities of the future, and 
are taking " advanced steps " toward their realization. 
The learned man wanted " I die learning " for the epitaph 



a bird's-eye view 27 

on his tombstone. The Sunday School will have no tomb- 
stone, for its motto is " I live learning," or in the words 
of Paul burnt into his very soul : " Not that I have already 
obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if 
so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid 
hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself 
yet to have laid hold; but one thing I do, forgetting 
the things which are behind, and stretching forward to 
the things which are before, I press on toward the goal 
unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." 

II. It is Well-balanced in its Progress. — It is not like 
Dickens's Skitzlanders in that strange land, the peculiarity 
of which was that, while every person there was born 
physically perfect, yet at a certain age any part of the 
body which had not been used was lost entirely so that 
nearly every inhabitant was deformed. 

The good Sunday School develops in every direction ; 
it moves forward in every line of progress with equal 
step. 

III. It has One Great Aim : Conversion and Culture in 
the Christian Life and Character. — It is vastly more than 
Zoroaster's doctrine that " the one thing needful is to do 
right." "All good thoughts, words, and works lead to 
paradise ; all evil thoughts, words, and works lead to hell." 
It is first of all to lead the young to make their life choice 
of God and right ; to inspire them through the life of 
Christ, through the cross of Christ, and through the Holy 
Spirit, with right principles, with a new heart, with a love 
to God with all the heart, and a love for their neighbor as 
for themselves. 

Then follows the training into the perfect Christian life, 



28 THE FRONT LINE 

into the practice of every virtue, and in the best social 
service. The late Professor Davidson conceived of educa- 
tion as " the process of transforming the original nature of 
man into his ideal nature." 

And everything in the school — the teacher, the teach- 
ing, the devotional exercises, the music, the reverential 
order, the organization, the giving — must focus on this 
end and aim. 

IV. It is a Bible School. — A real school for the study 
of the Bible, as the divine means for attaining the aim of 
the Sunday School. 

There are many instrumentalities, which in various de- 
grees are seeking this end, but the Bible as an educating 
force is the principal one in the work of the Sunday School, 
and should be aided by everything that can illustrate and 
impress its truths. 

This means real study. 

It means a Bible in every scholar's hands. 

It means the best methods of Bible study. 

It means nearly everything in the Front Line of the 
Sunday School. 

V. It is a Bible School for the Whole Church. —There is 
a familiar ideal, originating, in its form, with Bishop 
Vincent : — 

" ALL THE CHURCH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ; 
"ALL THE SUNDAY SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH; 
"AND EVERYBODY IN BOTH." 

Dr. C. R. Blackall, the wise and efficient editor of the 
Sunday School literature of the Baptist denomination, 
places, on the title-page of his capital little volume Our 
Sunday School Work and how to do It, a variation of this 
as his ideal : — 



A bird's-eye view 29 

"A HOME school and mission for every baptist 
church; 

"EVERY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH IN THE SUNDAY 

SCHOOL SERVICE; 
"EVERY MEMBER OF THE SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH 

SERVICE ; 
"ALL AND ALWAYS FOR JESUS CHRIST, OUR LORD 

AND KING." 

The Sunday School is the Church studying the Word of 
God. 

The emphasis of the morning service is on the inspirational. 

That of the Sunday School service is on the educational. 

That of the evening service is on the evangelistic. 

The Sunday School is primarily for the children. When 
Jesus laid his last threefold command on the penitent 
Peter, once he says "Shepherd my sheep," but twice he 
emphasizes the young, " Feed my lambs," " Feed my young 
sheep." 1 The church can do no better than to use the 
same emphasis in its services. 

But there is danger in making the school exclusively 
for the young. I have heard of a Parisian lady who had 
found the elixir of youth, and by using a few drops each 
day had retained her youthful beauty and vigor. But her 
maid found the elixir, and, taking a large draught, became 
a tiny child like Alice in Wonderland. 

The whole adult membership needs the Sunday School. 
They need it for themselves ; need it for their own train- 
ing and spiritual growth ; need it for the renovation and 
freshness of life which contact with the children gives; 
need it for its home influence on the children. 

1 appia, lambs ; 7r/)6/3ard, sheep ; 7rpoj3drtd, diminutive, little sheep, 
young in years or in experience. 



30 THE FKONT LINE 

They are needed in the school to give it character and 
tone. They are needed as a means of retaining the young 
men and women under its influence. 

Both children and adults will be better trained, better 
instructed, more deeply influenced, when all study the 
Bible together. Mr. J. W. Axtell in his Organized Sunday 
School declares that " the making of the Church roll and 
the Sunday School roll so nearly identical that the latter 
shall practically embrace the former, is the first condition 
of the very best type of school." 

VI. The Church will make the best possible provision 
for the needs of the children, as the wise mother does in 
the household. At the Front Line, in the distribution of 
the finances, the needs of the children will never be neg- 
lected or scrimped. In the arrangement of the services 
the children will never be forgotten. Never will the Church 
or pastor let sermon or service trespass on the hour set 
apart for the children ; never will they be willing to climb 
to their highest experiences on a ladder made of the losses 
of their children. 

VII. The Sunday Schools on the Front Line will have 
the best buildings, rooms, and apparatus within reach of 
the Church. Everything that can aid in the work will be 
provided. See Chapter XI. 

VIII. The teachers will be chiefly from the members of 
the Church ; the choicest and the best people in it working 
for love. Thus they will be teaching by example seven 
days in the week what they teach in the school one hour a 
week. Except for some primary classes, and some special 
adult classes, nothing can be as good for the school or the 
Church as this plan. The Church needs it as much as the 
children. And for the children, no knowledge, no train- 



A bird's-eye view 31 

ing in teachers from without, can weigh for one moment 
against a band of teachers selected from the best members 
in the Church for character-making power. See Chap- 
ter V. 

IX. The Teachers will be trained for their Work. — The 
Educator will be Educated. He will be educated to ac- 
complish the aim for which the Sunday School stands. 
He will be educated in character, in knowledge of the 
Bible, in the study of the child, in the art of teaching, and 
in the art of living. See Chapter V. 

X. Provision will be made by the Church for the Train- 
ing of its Teachers. — It will provide Reference Libraries, 
courses of lectures, normal classes, teachers' meetings; 
and, as far as possible, open the way for them to attend 
the institutes, conventions, lectures, classes, correspond- 
ence schools, and all means abundantly provided for this 
purpose. 

This they will do the more willingly because the parents, 
the young people, and the community in general need 
these things almost as much as the teachers. See Chap- 
ter V. 

XI. The Teacher's Pastorate. — Sunday School classes 
have been called " Little Parishes of Eight." Every good 
teacher is the pastor of his class. He has an unusual 
opportunity of giving to his class the shepherding which 
a pastor gives his flock. He can often gain the intimate 
confidence of the boys and girls, in some cases even more 
than parents can, and guide them with wise counsels. 
See Chapter III. 

XII. Organized Classes. — Every class above the primary 
will be organized with regular officers, and be largely self- 
governing. It can thus do much practical work like the 



32 THE FRONT LINE 

Whatsoever Committee in the Junior Endeavor. The 
members can invite others that would naturally belong to 
their grade to join them, the social meetings giving a spe- 
cially good opportunity for this purpose ; they can supple- 
ment the Sunday School work by meeting on week-day 
evenings, with the stereoscopic pictures or special studies ; 
they can give mutual help in various ways. 

Especially among boys is the organized class of great 
value. One of the brightest of our younger Sunday 
School writers, Rev. William Byron Forbush, Ph.D., in 
his Boy Problem, gives some figures from a Questionnaire 
by Dr. Sheldon. Of the 1034 boys of ten to sixteen 
years, who responded, 851 were members of societies 
formed among themselves. " From 1022 papers collected 
there were reported 862 societies, more than half of which 
were athletic or game clubs," the greatest period of 
activity being between the ages of ten and fifteen. Older 
classes are organized in a different way, but are quite 
as useful and necessary. They look out for the sick, 
the stranger, the neglected. They carry the invitation, 
they arrange socials, they plan for mutual improvement 
and help. 

XIII. The classes will usually consist of from six to ten 
scholars, except in the cases of the primary and the adult 
Bible classes, and those classes where some teacher has 
peculiar power of attracting and teaching. Many a teacher 
can succeed with six scholars who would fail with ten. 
Yet it is seldom wise to divide a class which has gathered 
around a teacher whose attraction has drawn the scholars 
to her. 

XIV. The study hour will not be less than forty minutes, 
but in the younger classes there will probably be more 



A bird's-eye view 33 

than one kind of lesson. To them belong the Supple- 
mental Lessons. 

XV. The School will begin and end promptly. — The 
opening exercises will never infringe on the study period. 
If for any reason something must be shortened, it will be 
something besides the study hour ; that will be as sacred 
and unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 
Once a minister, coming to preach to a regiment of 
soldiers, saw this motto in large letters before him on 
the wall of the tent : — 

" The New Beatitude : Blessed is he that is short for 
he shall be asked to come again." 

So on the successful Sunday School is written : Blessed 
is the superintendent that is short, and prompt, and busi- 
nesslike, and does everything on time, for he shall be asked 
to serve again and again. 

XVI. The Devotional Exercises will be truly devotional, 
producing the best possible atmosphere for the culture 
of the spiritual life, for the study and the practice of 
the Word of God. The forms of devotion, those that 
naturally express the devotional spirit, will be universal 
throughout the school. President Hopkins wisely taught 
his classes that where the natural forms of devotion are 
disregarded, the spirit of devotion itself will die. Closed 
eyes and bowed heads are essential during the prayers. 
" The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep 
silence before him." Let every worldly thought and 
feeling be hushed, that " the still, small voice " of God 
may be heard. No one, however saintly, will be allowed 
to lead the Sunday School in prayer who does not express 
the devotional spirit, the longings and desires which chil- 
dren can feel, and enter into from the heart ; for other- 



34 THE FRONT LINE 

wise he is not only tempting them to irreverence and 
discourtesy to God and his worship, but is training them 
into the hypocrisy of using forms without the spirit. 

This is the time also when the most devotional portions 
of the Scripture shall become so familiar by continued 
repetition from Sunday to Sunday that they will become, 
like the Lord's Prayer, the natural medium for the ex- 
pression of the religious feeling. 

My long-time friend, the Rev. Alford A. Butler, D.D., 
Dean of the Faribault Episcopal Divinity School, gave at 
the Crypt Conference some wise advice which all denomi- 
nations would do well to adapt to their own conditions. 

"The worship of the Sunday School should train the 
children to understand and love the services of the 
Church. Yet some clergymen, ignorant of the first prin- 
ciples of pedagogy, do the opposite thing. They so plan 
their Sunday School worship as to educate the children to 
be unfamiliar with the Church's prayer and praise, and 
strangers to their devotional helpfulness. Do you won- 
der that such children drop out between Sunday School 
and Church ? " On the other hand the spirit of worship 
will make the school " the house of God, and the gate of 
heaven." 

XVII. The School will be graded both in material and 
in method, with distinct upward steps, and a final gradua- 
tion, not out of the school, but into the great adult de- 
partment where the scholars will pursue post-graduate 
courses till God calls them to his Heavenly Home. See 
Chapter VI. 

XVIII. The Regular Lessons will be the continually 
improving and modified International Lessons, at least 
till some of the many active experimenters on the Front 



A bird's-eye view 35 

Line shall see a vision and present a workable ideal of 
something better, not merely in certain directions but as 
a whole. For I have as yet seen none — even in the 
light of the present scientific child study and pedagogy — 
which combines so much of the best, with so few " outs," 
as that system, with optional lessons for the children at 
the one end, and unlimited elective lessons for certain 
adult classes at the other, according to the latest plan. 
See Chapter VI. 

XIX. Supplemental Lessons and Reviews. — Supple- 
mental lessons are drills in condensed statements, and 
various things to be learned by heart, which are essential 
to the best understanding of the Bible, and of each sepa- 
rate lesson. They do not pertain to one system of lessons 
more than another. There is no conceivable system in 
which they are not needed. They keep in view the whole 
scheme of which each separate lesson is a part, and in 
which the lesson finds its place and unity. They belong 
chiefly to the lower grades, up to fourteen or fifteen years. 
They should be used in general exercises wherever pos- 
sible. They should include summaries of geography, of 
history, of chronology, of biography, of facts about the 
Bible, of the great truths of Christianity, and of the dis- 
tinctive doctrines of the denomination to which the 
school belongs. 

Reviews, if made not a mere repetition of the detailed 
lessons, their titles and golden texts, or special teachings, 
but a broad view of the movement of the history, can 
accomplish a part of this purpose, but only a part. Ac- 
cording to Professor Hamill, the review is " the completion, 
test, and confirmation of teaching " The Review "is one of 
the seven essential conditions of all true teaching. Other 



36 THE FRONT LINE 

things being equal, he is the ablest and most successful 
teacher who secures from his pupils the most frequent, 
thorough, and interesting reviews." 

XX. The Sunday School will be a Part of a Great System 
of Cooperation. — It will cooperate with the other depart- 
ments of the Church in giving aid in lectures and educa- 
tional classes ; with the organized young people's societies 
in many directions. It will be in closest relations with 
parents and the home ; with pastors' classes and with the 
work of the day school. 

It will cooperate with other Sunday Schools ; as, for in- 
stance, in taking a Sunday School census, so that no one 
can fail of receiving an invitation to some Sunday School ; 
in teachers' meetings and normal classes; in an inter- 
change of teachers of Bible classes and experts in differ- 
ent departments of Bible study. It will cooperate with 
the town libraries; as, for instance, in New York City 
and in the cities of Newton and Somerville (Mass.). 

It will cooperate, both by personal attendance and finan- 
cial support, with the great organized work of the Inter- 
national Committee in extending Sunday School interests 
throughout the state and the country ; and with the Sun- 
day School work of the Religious Education Association 
and all other organizations which aid the cause of Bible 
study. 

Two cooperating with another two are much more than 
two and two ; separate, single notes are sweet sounds, but 
single notes multiplied are an anthem ; separate colors are 
lovely, but multiplied together they become a cathedral 
window. 

One of the speakers in the Parliament of Religions re- 
lates the legend that " when Adam and Eve were turned 



A bird's-eye view 37 

out of Eden, their earthly paradise, an angel smashed the 
gates, and the fragments, flying over the earth, are the 
precious stones." These stones, he says, were picked up 
by the various sects and philosophies, each claiming that 
"his own fragment alone was the true material out of 
which the Paradise Gates are made." By making all the 
Sunday School units " cooperant units," by blending to- 
gether all the jewelled fragments scattered over the Sun- 
day School world, there will at last be constructed the 
Paradise Gates to the Sunday School ideal. 

XXI. The Sunday School and the Home. — Since the de- 
cline of morning and evening family prayers, the Sunday 
School is the most effective means of cultivating Bible study 
in the home. Where the whole family have the same lesson, 
they have a centre of attraction for Bible study, a supply 
of helps, increasing interest, a topic of conversation and 
discussion, of which there is now nothing to take the 
place. 

It is especially valuable in introducing Bible study into 
families not connected with any Church. 

A large part of Bible study at home is occasioned and 
stimulated by the necessity of teaching a class in the Sun- 
day School, or of helping the children to prepare their 
lessons. 

The home is the best place for children to learn the 
Bible by putting their Sunday School lessons in practice. 

The principles which train teachers are almost equally 
valuable to parents for training their children. 

The Daily Bible Readings which accompany each lesson 
are a great stimulus to Bible reading at home. Especially 
so is the great International Bible Reading Association 
of nearly one million members in all parts of the world, 



38 THE FRONT LINE 

having its fountain head in London, 57 Ludgate Hill, Mr. 
Charles Waters being its founder and Honorary Secretary. 

Most of the ignorance of the Bible on the part of the 
young, of which so much has lately been said, lies at the 
door of the neglect of Bible reading in the home. If 
modern children read the Bible as I have told you I was 
trained to read it, there would not be much danger of those 
children failing in the Bible tests when they entered col- 
lege. The Home will never be at its best till in each one 
is obeyed the Lord's command to Israel of old, concerning 
His Holy Words : " Thou shalt teach them diligently to 
thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when 
thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou 
shalt bind them for a sign upon thine head, and they shall 
be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write 
them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates." 

XXII. A wide-awake Home Department will always be 
an efficient agency of the Front Line Sunday School. 
Most schools cannot be on the Front Line without one. 
The Home Department idea was almost a stroke of genius. 
It is one of the most important developments of the Sun- 
day School work which has appeared for many years, and 
the greatness of its possibilities, when the whole Sunday 
School world shall have come up to the Front Line of an 
efficient, well-worked, improved Home Department, has 
but begun to be realized. 

The movement is increasing. There are already more 
than three hundred thousand members. Every year 
new schools adopt the plan. It is a tried and proved 
success. Its numbers should be added to the Sunday 
School roll. 



A bird's-eye view 39 

It has been found that, in addition to its values to the 
Sunday School work, the social power of the Church can be 
increased by appointing prominent women of the Church 
to be visitors. They have a reason for visiting strangers, 
and a topic by which most easily they can introduce the 
work and the fellowship of the Church, and give the 
invitation to its services. 

XXIII. It will be a missionary school, deeply interested 
in spreading the Gospel, widening the horizon even of the 
younger scholars, and building them up in an unselfish 
desire to help others. This is another field in which to 
put in practice the truths they have learned, and in which 
to join in the great work of the Church. The missionary 
interest is the saving of the Church, the enriching of the 
Church, the broadening of the Church. Thus we talk of 
the Broad Church and the Narrow Church. There are 
two infallible tests which, like Ithuriel's spear, pierce 
through all claims and names : Are you broad enough 
to take this life and the future life into your calculation ; 
and are you broad enough to take the welfare of all men, 
far and near, of every race and name, into your labors, 
your giving, and your prayers ? 

XXIV. It will be flexible, adapting itself to all circum- 
stances, of wealth or poverty, in city or in country, for family 
life or mission ground. Great success and usefulness can 
be obtained under the most adverse circumstances, if the 
work is inspired with the right spirit and a determination 
to do the best possible. 

In the cemetery among the beautiful hills of Williams- 
town stands a monument to one of my college classmates. 
While wrestling in his freshman year he injured his knee. 
Lameness, pain, and ill-health were his guardian angels 



40 THE FRONT LINE 

through study and travel, till he became a professor in the 
college and a saintly man, whose face shone almost like 
that of Moses when he came from the presence of God. 
On that monument are carved the words which his life had 
wrought out : Meine Trilbsal war mein Grluck, My misfor- 
tune has been my good fortune, My trouble has been my 
blessing. This is a good motto for every Sunday School 
that works under disadvantages. It is possible for them to 
make it the expression of their whole experience, written 
in letters of heavenly gold, Meine Trilbsal war mein Gluck. 
XXV. The Front Line Sunday School will be interest- 
ing and enthusiastic. — - According to President Schurman 
" Interest is the greatest word in Education." The Sunday 
School must be rendered interesting, or it will fail both in 
numbers and usefulness. This does not mean that its 
business is to please, to make things easy, to lay no bur- 
dens on the scholars. That is always a failure. It defeats 
itself. As Professor Home well expresses it, " It is not a 
class-room vaudeville, it is an engrossing occupation ; it is 
not an amusing entertainment of the pupils, it is a joyous 
attainment by the pupils ; it is not play, it is attractive, 
compelling work ; it is not pursuing the line of least 
resistance, it is discovering the line of greatest attraction. 
The true opposite of interest is not hard work, but drudg- 
ery." It means that there is something worth while, 
something the child needs, something connected with his 
daily life, something which he wants to know or do. Boys 
are attracted to athletics, not because foot-ball and row- 
ing and tennis and golf are easy, but because they are 
hard. Compare Ruskin's wonderful words in the last 
chapter of the last volume of Modern Painters, where 
he pours out his very soul on fire with intensest feeling. 



A bird's-eye view 41 

The subjects of study must, however, be so presented 
that they will not be drudgery, but will be so interesting 
that the scholars will love to study. " A good Teacher," 
says De Garmo, " can make the driest sort of material 
glow with life and interest." I once went nearly two 
hundred miles to hear President Harper, then a professor 
at Yale, teach Hebrew, in order to learn how to teach in 
the Sunday School. He taught Hebrew in so interesting a 
manner that he made its dry bones charm one like a story. 
He is the best language teacher I have ever known. 

Everything about a Sunday School, from beginning to 
end, while never deviating in the least degree from its 
great purpose, never lessening its real work, should yet be 
so enthusiastic, so attractive, that it would be a punish- 
ment to a child to compel him to stay away. 

XXVI. The Front Line Sunday School will be an 
Evangelizing Power. — It is the business of the Church to 
bring the Gospel within reach of every person in its com- 
munity, and one of the three great agencies for this end, 
and not the least, is the Front Line Sunday School. You 
can reach parents through the children. You can bring 
the Bible and its words of life into the home through the 
children's Sunday School lessons. The superintendent of 
one of the largest Sunday Schools in the country said to 
me that he reached many mothers through the cradle roll. 

No greater problem faces this country of ours than arises 
from the mighty inflow of peoples from every land under 
the sun ; and the numbers who are so far away from the 
churches as to be only slightly touched by their influ- 
ence. Some one has said that he who does not see the 
danger is blind, and he that is not willing to face it is a 
coward. 



42 THE FRONT LINE 

I tbank God that he has brought these people to our 
doors where we can reach them, where we can put them 
under the best influence, and has said to us, " Educate, 
Christianize, these peoples or perish." 

There is a great cry " America for Americans." Very 
well. I believe in " America for Americans," if you will 
interpret it aright; that is America to make Americans. 
We have the instrumentality and the power, and it is our 
business to turn every one that comes to our shores into 
a real, true, earnest, patriotic, loyal, Christian American. 
I heard once the motto given, " Our country, right or 
wrong " ; and I still believe in that, if you will interpret 
it aright. "Our country, right or wrong"; if she is 
right, to keep her right ; if she is wrong, to make her 
right. " Our country, right or wrong ! " And every coun- 
try, English or French, Chinese or Japanese, may say the 
same thing if they will. 

Now the Sunday School is the right hand of the Church 
in this work. The children are the ones to carry the 
invitation to other children. The Sunday School should 
make a census of the field. From the town or city 
authorities can be found the name and address of every 
child between five and fifteen years old. It is easy to 
learn from each Sunday School which ones belong to its 
care. The residue can be seen and invited to go to which- 
ever school they prefer. 

As a rule it is better to make the one central school as 
attractive as possible, and then furnish transportation for 
those at a distance, than to sustain a separate school in a 
small neighborhood. This plan is becoming popular in 
the day school. 

One of the real dangers in wanting a model school is 



A bird's-eye view 43 

that it shall be made good by exclusion rather than by 
transformation, that it shall be like the Pharisee's feast, 
which failed of the blessing because to it were invited only 
"friends, brethren, kinsmen, rich neighbors." Jesus de- 
scribes the model feast thus : " But when thou makest a 
feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and 
thou shalt be blessed." The model Sunday School is not 
one where, merely because others are excluded or unsought, 
all behavior is perfect, every scholar has his lesson, is 
always on time, and gives no trouble to his teacher. 
The model school is after the bad boy, the untrained 
girl, the disobedient child, the wayward and the erring, 
the poor, the spiritually blind. Thus only can it be 
blessed. 

There was a period in my ministry when the Sunday 
evening meetings were thronged, not to hear me preach, 
for the meetings were simply well-organized prayer meet- 
ings ; and among the young people came a number who 
disturbed the meeting, whispered during prayers, threw 
peanut shells, and made themselves a nuisance. It must 
be stopped; but how? One of my ministerial friends had 
driven nearly all his young people away from his meeting 
by scolding them for such conduct. This we would not 
do. Shut out the deacons, if need be, keep the saints at 
home, if you must, but never those who do not know 
enough to behave, for, if any one needs the prayer meet- 
ing or Sunday School, it is they. We cured the trouble 
in a very simple way, by offering a prize to the member of 
the day school who should write the best essay on how to 
behave in prayer meeting. For nearly two months I be- 
gan every meeting with such an essay, and after the first 
one the meeting was so still and solemn that one of the 



44 THE FRONT LINE 

deacons said to me afterward that it seemed like a revival. 
The principal of the most perfect day school I have ever 
seen said to me that he never refused a boy because he 
was bad. But he was not allowed to stay bad. I heard a 
man in a convention say, " The larger the school, the larger 
the failure." True ; provided it is a failure at all. But if 
a school does not get in everybody, if it is not welcoming 
even the publicans and sinners, as Christ did, it is more than 
a failure, it is a crime. " Not failure, but low aim is crime." 

I have been presenting to you, as clearly as I can, some 
glimpses of the Front Line of Sunday School work. Dimly 
and imperfectly as it is seen, it is yet full of encourage- 
ment and hope. It is like the sunrise from my mountain 
home in the lovely White Mountain valley, where I am 
writing these words and am looking at the front line of 
the coming day. The sun is still behind the eastern hills ; 
the darkness and light are having their battle in the val- 
ley below; the shadows linger, dark and dismal, in the 
ravines ; the mists cover the course of the streams. But 
I know that the day is coming, because I can see the 
whole circle of the western mountain tops glowing in the 
light of the rising sun. 

John Fiske, in his Critical Period of United States His- 
tory, tells a story of the stormy Constitutional Convention 
of 1789. On the back of the President's quaint, black 
arm-chair there was emblazoned a half sun, brilliant with 
gilded rays. As the meeting was breaking up and Wash- 
ington arose, Franklin pointed to the chair and made it 
the text for a prophecy. " As I have been sitting here 
all these weeks," he said, " I have often wondered whether 
yonder sun was rising or setting. But now I know that 
it is a rising sun." 



a bird's-eye view 45 

I have long looked at the Sunday School. I know 
something of its darkness, its difficulties, its discourage- 
ments, its comparisons with the day schools. There are 
those who look only at its shadows, whose eyes are fixed 
on its failures, on the slowness of its development com- 
pared with its ideals, who "expect the Sunday School 
work to advance with strides befitting a Hiawatha remov- 
ing obstructions as by a blow from his magical mittens," 
who have never learned " Phillips Brooks's winning com- 
bination — ' Certainty of final issue and patience with the 
lingering means.'" These can say hard things without 
number and with truth. And usually they do it sincerely, 
in order to spur us on to labor and pray and wait as " they 
that watch for the morning." 

But whosoever looks at the actual Front Line, who sees 
the light on the mountain tops, knows that the Sunday 
School is not a setting but a rising sun. 

The Day School has made wonderful advances, but the 
Sunday School has made more. Except the marvellous 
progress of the Christian Endeavor movement, meeting as 
it did a great hunger and need, I know of no educational 
movement that has made such rapid strides as the Sunday 
School in the last third of the last century. Where has 
there been in educational lines anything that has flashed 
out new light and new power all along the whole horizon 
like the International Lesson System thirty years ago. 
It met a great need, and it, with the best helps and 
methods connected with it, has ever since grown better 
with great rapidity. The whole country is organized 
for Sunday School progress and teacher-training. The 
press is busy aiding its work, with an output exceeding 
all periodicals except the daily newspapers. The great 



46 THE FRONT LINE 

Religious Education Association is sustained by the most 
learned men in the country, who give their time and 
strength to it. Science is flashing new light on Bible 
study, and child study, and principles of teaching. The 
Bible League, the Young Men's Christian Associations, 
Chautauqua Assemblies, and Summer Schools have joined 
the great army of helpers. The colleges and universities 
are furnishing courses on the Bible and pedagogy. Every 
advance in secular education gives light and help and 
example ; while many and many an experiment is made, 
on a larger or smaller scale, by practical men as well as by 
seers of visions and dreamers of dreams. All these mean 
that light is dawning all along the horizon. 

" Many times quailing, never once failing 
So the new day came out of the night." 

" Day boils at last, and overflows the world." 



Ill 

THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 

It is Sunday morning, and I am on my way to the 
Sunday School to teach my class. As I walk slowly and 
thoughtfully along I ask myself certain questions. First 
of all : — 

What am I going for ? What do I propose to do ? — One 
cannot hit a mark unless he has a mark. He will be like 
the famous Roman soldier who received a leather medal 
for missing the mark sixty consecutive times. Before the 
artist begins his work on a marble block he has a clear 
vision of just what he desires to accomplish, or every blow 
of his hammer might be a mistake. He whose work is 
the training and guiding of immortal souls needs to have 
a vision of what he wants each boy or girl in his class to 
become, and to make every lesson he teaches tell upon 
that result. 

A professor in one of our largest institutions of learn- 
ing, himself a very notable teacher, said to me the other 
day that one great mistake made by teachers was the fail- 
ure to realize that teaching was a business, just as much 
a business as banking, or railroading, or manufacturing. 
Their business was to accomplish certain results with 
young people, and they failed in business if they failed to 
produce those results. The Sunday School teacher must 
say, as the young Jesus said to his parents, " Wist ye 

47 



48 THE FRONT LINE 

not that I must be about my Father's business?" There- 
fore I make clear in my mind what is the business I am 
to do in my class to-day. 

Again I say to myself : — 

I am only an Ordinary Person, and how can I do this 
Great Work? — For what I am set to do is a great work 
and difficult. It is harder to learn how to teach than how 
to preach. There are more good scholars in the school of 
Demosthenes than in the school of Socrates. It is easier 
to preach with Emerson, " Hitch your wagon to a star," 
than to inspire and guide the boys in the process of hitch- 
ing their own wagons to a star, even the Star of Bethlehem. 
How I used to dislike biographies because most of them 
were written in the easy way of telling what their subjects 
had become, but failed in the teaching element of showing 
how these men — 

" Toiled along the climbing way 
With painful steps and slow." 

I never enjoyed biography till I read Hugh Miller's 
My Schools and Schoolmasters, where he not only pictures 
the height attained, but shows us the " blazed trail" 
through the forest, the very steps by which he climbed the 
Hill Difficulty to the Palace Beautiful on the top. 

But as I walk along some consoling thoughts come to 
me like the angel to Elijah under the juniper tree. I re- 
call the saying of Bishop Phillips Brooks, that "the larger 
part of the Christian work through which the Millennial 
days are coming, is done not by the people of ten talents, 
but by those of one or two talents faithfully used." 

Then I recall the saying that " a little man with a great 
Gospel is greater than a great man with a little Gospel." 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 49 

I may have but few talents but I have a great Gospel, 
and the might of the Holy Spirit is mine, — the same 
powers which, through imperfect men, common fishermen 
and their successors, have wrought wonders and victories 
to which, in all secular history, there is no parallel. Those 
powers are mine for the work I am to do with my class, 
and I am comforted. 

Naturally follows the next question : — 

Am I Prepared ? — You might as well bombard Gibraltar 
with unloaded cannon, as teach a class when you are 
unprepared. The old comparison that the best of cannon 
and powder and shot, most carefully loaded, is useless 
unless touched with the fire, is true now and always ; but 
the converse is also true, that all the lightnings of heaven 
cannot fire off an unloaded gun. 

I used to be indignant at my church members because 
one after another they refused to take a class when called 
unexpectedly from the Bible class or visitors' seats. 
How can good Christian men, the saints, the salt of the 
earth, refuse to teach a Sunday School class ! I wanted to 
launch all the thunderbolts of Sinai at them for their 
neglect of duty. But I changed my mind, and wanted to 
aim the thunderbolts at the officials who did not see to 
it that there was always on hand a supply of substitute 
teachers who were prepared. Of course in an emergency 
almost any one can take a class for once and make the 
service helpful to the children on some subject. 

Dr. Schauffler wisely says : — 

" When you have arrived at Saturday night you have 
reached this point : — 

" Plan Your Work ! All the week you plan 

your work. When you come to Sunday School you, — 



50 THE FRONT LINE 

« Work Your Plan." 

But how can you " work your plan " unless you have 
" planned your work " ! 

I am not now speaking of that general preparation of 
knowledge and spirit and character to which Dr. Meyer 
refers when he says that the important question is not, 
" Is the sermon prepared ? " but, " Is the man prepared? " 
but of the special preparation of the lesson for the day. 
Am I full of the subject? Am I satisfied with it? Has it 
taken possession of me till it has culminated in a tingling, 
controlled, poised enthusiasm for the truth I am to teach? 
Has my being been vitalized by it, till I have tried to 
practise it, or experience it as a part of my own life, till it 
seems the one thing to teachf the one message my whole 
soul yearns to give? 

I am now drawing near the place, and I ask myself : — 

Who is My Assistant Teacher ? — One's assistant teacher, 
according to a bright article by Mrs. Harris in the 
Sunday School Times several years ago, is his own per- 
sonal bearing, character, and example. 

One of the brightest of Edward Everett Hale's immortal 
stories is "My Double and How He Undid Me." Every 
teacher has his double, and it will either undo him or 
double him. It will double his power and influence, or 
it will undo him. 

Who is your assistant teacher ? What is he doing ? 
What is his influence as he stands with you before the 
class ? 

Do you think that you can get your class to obey the 
superintendent's bell if you do not obey it ? If you keep 
on talking while he talks, will not they whisper while you 
are talking? 



THE TEACHEK AND HIS CLASS 51 

Do you think that you can get all the members of your 
class to sing if you do not sing ? 

Do you think that you can hold the attention of your 
class if you do not hold your own thought to the lesson ? 

Do you think that you can make your scholars prepare 
their lesson at home if they know that you come to the 
class without preparation ? 

Will they be prompt if you are not prompt ? 

Can you make your scholars bow their heads in prayer 
if you stare around the room during the time of devotion, 
as though you were ashamed to worship God, or even if 
you open your eyes to see whether they are closing theirs ? 

Never. You can never be successful with the class 
until your assistant teacher shall do and be exactly that 
which you wish your children to do and to be. 

The " masterpiece of all eloquence " is the oration of 
Demosthenes when he pleaded before the Athenians that 
they should crown him because of his wise counsels and 
his deeds. 

The next greatest oration in history is that of iEschines 
in his reply to Demosthenes, arguing that to crown one 
who had fled from battle, and by his counsels had brought 
the city to ruin, was to corrupt the young men by present- 
ing such a bad example for their admiration. For, he 
says, " You know well it is not music, nor the gymnasium, 
nor the schools that mould young men ; it is much more 
. . . the public example," it is the men you honor, the men 
for whom you vote, for the character of a city is deter- 
mined by the character of the men it crowns." 

And you will find that your assistant teacher is the 
great teacher of your class ; and he has so much to do 
with your success, that at home, in your business, in your 



52 THE FRONT LINE 

class, everywhere, your assistant teacher and yourself 
must be at one, if you would be a successful teacher. 

The Greeting. — And now I have reached the class a 
little early, and welcome each member of the class. My 
neighbor, Rev. Dr. F. E. Clark, " Father Endeavor," has 
upon the porch of his house the word " Welcome " in 
twenty-three different languages in which Christian En- 
deavor Societies are formed. In every form in which 
language or action can express the feeling, we bid our 
class a welcome warm from the heart. 

While the school is gathering, let us look around a little 
together and see what tools we have to work with. Look 
into our class room. Pictures give a homelike appearance 
to the room ; a hat-tree is in one corner, and in another a 
shelf with Bibles and hymn-books. ' On one wall is a 
double, hinged blackboard, and by its side a home-made 
cornice containing maps and charts mounted on rollers. 
In the centre of the room is a table, around which the 
chairs are placed in a circle. In the drawer of the table 
are paper pads, chalk, pencils, small maps, quarterlies, 
charts, pictures. 

Two or three articles are there from Palestine, which 
illustrate one point in the lesson. A couple of stereo- 
scopes are on the table, with some choice stereographs of 
the scene in which our lesson story took place. The boys 
are studying there while we are looking around waiting 
for the session to open. There is a Bible for every boy, 
though we prefer that each should bring his own, together 
with his Quarterly. 

Each boy has also a blank-book in which he places 
penny pictures of scenes in the Life of Christ, and is to 
write out a description of the scene when he reaches home. 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 53 

But you ask what you would do if you could not have 
all these things. That is just the question I wanted you 
to ask. The description above is not a fancy picture, but 
a photograph of a room in an ordinary village church, 
and almost everything is, in some form, within the reach 
of most teachers. If you cannot have a room, screen off 
some corner of the large room ; if you have no large 
maps, use the maps in the Quarterly; if you have no 
blackboard, you can get ten large sheets of paper for a 
cent ; a table can be bought cheap, or you can make one ; 
if you cannot buy penny pictures, cut them out of the 
papers or magazines ; if you have no articles from Pales- 
tine, think up some simple object lesson to illustrate with, 
and you will find that even " pails, animals, waterpots, are 
glorified when set in signs of the Zodiac in the sky." 

I think it was President Garfield who said that a log 
of wood in the forest, with President Hopkins on one end 
and a student on the other, was a college. All history is 
full of remarkable things done with the poorest tools and 
in the most unfavorable circumstances. I praise the Lord 
for it with all my heart. 

But, mark you, this is never true of those who might 
have had better tools and were unwilling to take the 
pains and make the sacrifices necessary to obtain them. 
The one essential thing is the earnest spirit that realizes 
the importance of the work, that is willing to make sacri- 
fices to get the best things possible to do it with, and 
then does its level best with what it has. 

No Sunday School teacher in any circumstances, with 
this spirit, ever failed of success. 

The opening devotional service is over and the teacher 
is alone with his class, even if he is in the main room sur- 



54 THE FRONT LINE 

rounded with other classes. We will not disturb him, 
but we will watch him closely, and after the school is 
dismissed we ask him questions about some things that 
puzzle us. 

First, about his use of Bibles and Quarterlies in the class. 
We say to him, We notice that you, as teacher, and all 
your class, have both Quarterlies and Bibles open before 
you. But we have been told that this is all wrong. We 
know Sunday Schools where the " helps " are shut out 
entirely. They must be left at home. A great Sunday 
School convention passed resolutions to the effect that 
" the ; helps ' and not the Bible are as a rule used both by 
teachers and scholars in the Sabbath School classes ; and 
the consequence is [that] our Sabbath School children, 
while they read and learn a great deal about the Bible, do 
not grow up in that familiarity with the Bible itself which 
is essential to their becoming strong and steadfast Chris- 
tians." 

The teacher replies : I use both as the best way of 
growing up in familiarity with the Bible, the purpose 
these others are seeking. I have tried every possible way, 
and learned what I could from others, and I have settled 
down upon this plan. You will notice, however, that my 
Bible and Quarterly were lying on the table, and that I 
was so familiar with my lesson that for the most part 
I did not have to look at either. Many years ago I read 
a book on extempore preaching (Bautain's) of which I 
remember only two things, one of which has stood me in 
good stead ever since. 

It is this : There are two mental processes in preach- 
ing and teaching ; one, the main thought to be presented, 
the other, the subsidiary processes, like recalling the 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 55 

thoughts and their order in extempore preaching, or re- 
membering the words in reciting from memory, or keeping 
to the manuscript in reading. 

Now each of these three methods, extempore, memoriz- 
ing, and reading, can be made equally effective, provided 
the subsidiary processes are unconscious, so that the whole 
mind can be given unfettered, absolutely free, to the sub- 
ject to be impressed. The same principle holds true of 
ease in writing when we spell automatically ; and in music 
when the piano keys are struck without a conscious effort 
of will for each note. 

Of course one of the lessons to be learned incidentally 
in the Sunday School is the use of the Bible ; but the way 
to learn that is chiefly by continual references to it. The 
good Quarterly has many carefully selected references, 
and it is easier both for teacher and scholar to use the 
Quarterly for this purpose. If you trust to your memory 
alone you will make comparatively little use of the Bible. 
If you take pains to select references yourself at home, 
and note them down on paper which you bring to the 
class, then you simply use a little self-made Quarterly 
instead of the printed one. 

Moreover the scripture in the Quarterly is as real Bible 
as if it were bound in the full Bible form ; and in a form 
very convenient to use for some purposes. In the major- 
ity of cases, not only in other schemes but in the Inter- 
national Lessons, the whole of the lesson is not usually 
printed in the Quarterly, so that to study the whole les- 
son one must have his Bible ; though some critics seem 
never to have recognized this fact although for the last 
ten years noted at the head of each lesson. 

Again, the Quarterly is very convenient for reference 



56 THE FRONT LINE 

to maps and charts in the class and to its pictures. Then 
it is a great help in keeping teacher and class together to 
have the lesson scheme before them. 

Although no good teacher ever confines himself to the 
printed questions, yet, in order to induce the class to 
study the lesson at home, some, at least, of the questions 
they study at home must be asked in the class. 

There are apt to be some in the School who have not 
studied the lesson, and for them it is almost essential to 
have the Quarterly before them, that they may learn in 
the school what they neglected before they came. A 
Greek professor in one of our best universities was cor- 
recting the proof of a new Greek text-book for his class, 
and I noticed that he put the explanatory notes on the 
same page as the text, a thing that was tabooed in my 
college days. But he said that while the former way 
was theoretically better, yet, for practical purposes, 
with so little time for the study, he did not care where 
or when they learned the facts if only they learned 
them. 

Thus I use both Bible and Quarterlies in my class, 
because in that way we get the greatest knowledge of the 
Bible into the scholars. 

Next we asked, How do you govern your class? In 
every school and in many classes are active, restless, mis- 
chievous boys and girls, who make one think of a late 
picture in Life, where " plain Willie Jones " stands before 
you as an ordinary, wide-awake, active boy. Then we 
see Willie Jones as he appeared to his teacher, a little 
wild, black demon with horns and bats' wings, spear- 
pointed tail, and long, sharp claws. And lastly, we see 
him as he appeared to his mother, a heavenly-faced 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 57 

cherub, in saintly attitude, with seraph wings, a halo, and 
a crown. 

On the other hand, there are most excellent teachers, 
among the very best, who have little governing power. 
It is wise to keep these two classes apart. 

Here are some of my rules for governing a class, for 
good order there must be : — 

1. Make your scholars see that you are their friend 
and helper. 

2. See the best in each scholar and cultivate it. 

3. In the words of Professor Seeley, in his Foundation 
of Education : " Good order does not require the teacher 
to see every piece of innocent mischief. I have known 
teachers to make themselves and their pupils miserable 
because they saw every mischievous act, and felt con- 
strained to call the culprit to account. I have found 
that the fault was chiefly with the teacher, who was ner- 
vous, fussy, and falsely conscientious. Good order does 
not mean absolute stillness " in the class, as it does in the 
devotional exercises. A certain amount of noise means 
work. (Study Professor Seeley's whole chapter on this 
point.) 

4. Keep things moving. The best teacher I ever had 
imposed no rules, but simply insisted on each scholar 
attending to his study. 

5. Give the scholars something to do, and especially 
set the restless ones to doing it. Let them point out 
places on the map or write an answer or see a picture. 
Cultivate the self-activity of the child. (Study Dr. For- 
bush's Boy Problem.^) 

6. Throw questions rapidly at an inattentive scholar, 
and keep at it till he becomes attentive. 



58 THE FRONT LINE 

7. Find the " point of contact " between the lesson and 
the things that the boy is interested in, needs, and knows 
he needs. 

8. Use variety in teaching. The Self-made Merchant, 
in his Letters to His Son, says, "I don't care how good 
old methods are, new ones are better, even if they are 
only just as good." 

9. I have two beloved friends, one the head of a large 
preparatory school for boys, the other a professor and 
dean of a great university, who, of all men within my 
knowledge, come the nearest to the ideal governing of 
boys and young men. Both practically use the Rarey 
system of controlling horses — perfect kindness united 
with absolute power of control. I believe what a wise 
man has said, that " of all the tools on God's work-bench, 
he uses kindness a thousand times to any other's once." 

10. Here is a bit of experience from some one whose 
name I cannot recall : — 

" At Boston a little girl was entertaining me very pleas- 
antly in the parlor, while I was waiting for a friend to come 
downstairs. I said to her, 'You go to Sunday School?' 
'Oh, yes.' 'You have a good teacher?' 'Yes, indeed, I 
have a splendid teacher, a magnificent teacher.' ' Then 
I suppose you prepare your lessons during the week ? ' 
'Certainly,' she answered, 'teacher makes us do that.' I 
said, ' Give my compliments to your teacher. A teacher 
who makes her scholars prepare their Sunday School les- 
sons during the week must be a very good teacher.' 
' Well,' she said, ' I don't mean she makes us,' thinking 
her way of stating it had reflected on the spirit of the 
teacher. ' I don't mean she makes us get our lessons, but 
she teaches us so that we love to get our lessons.'' " 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 59 

11. Another teacher, a lady whose control over a large 
school is marvellous in its simplicity and perfection, uses 
chiefly self-government by the scholars themselves. This 
is especially effective where there is a class organization. 

Rev. C. D. Meigs, editor of the World- Evangel, once 
wrote for Sunday School teachers the following lines, 
which are as sharp as the diamond he describes : — 

" A diamond ' in the rough ' 
Is a diamond — sure enough, 
For, before it ever sparkles, 
It is made of diamond stuff. 

" Of course some one mu.st find it, 
Or it never will be found, 
And then some one must grind it, 
Or it never will be ground. 

"But when it's found, and when it's ground, 
And when it's burnished bright, 
That diamond's everlastingly 
Just flashing out its light. 



" O ! teacher in the Sunday School, 
Don't think you've ' done enough.' 
That worst boy in your class may be 
A diamond in the rough. 

" Perhaps you think he's ' grinding ' you ! 
And possibly you're right, 
But it may be you need grinding, 
To burnish you up bright." 

Again we ask our teacher, What do you do for your 
class outside of the Sunday School? 

A single hour once a week with his class is far too brief 
for the work a teacher is privileged to do. It is the 



60 THE FRONT LINE 

centre of a larger field, the source of many streams of 
helpful influences, the door to many opportunities. The 
class is the teacher's parish. He often can help his 
scholars more effectually in some aspects of their reli- 
gious life than either parents or pastor. A pastor is a 
shepherd. The good shepherd knows his sheep by name ; 
he knows their peculiarities, their relationships, their ten- 
dencies. He knows them as individuals. 

"Attempting to teach even little children, without know- 
ing their temptations and surroundings," said the late 
Israel P. Black, " is somewhat like a game of blindman's- 
buff, — the teacher having the bandage over the eyes ; 
but, unlike it, it is not a game of innocent sport, but a 
sad and hopeless struggle to find souls." 

The good teacher visits his class at their homes. He 
praises his scholars as much as he can. He may consult 
parents about their children's special needs and dangers, 
but very rarely, if ever, does he report misdemeanors. 
Professor James tells us, " Everything that a man can 
avoid under the notion that it is bad, he may also avoid 
under the notion that something else is good." Cultivate 
the good side. He has some form of class organization, 
through which he can become acquainted with his scholars, 
set them to work practising their lessons, and creating 
a class atmosphere which can make right things popular, 
and frown down all that is mean and unworthy. 

We will ask our teacher only one more question, and 
then let him go home and rest. What is your method of 
making the application of the lesson teachings ? 

This is the business end of the whole Sunday School 
machinery, — its point of contact with the spiritual 
nature, the character, and conduct. If it fails here, it fails 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 61 

in its chief end and aim. Professor Alexander R. Merriam, 
of Hartford Theological Seminary, has written a little 
tract, costing only three cents, which would be a great 
blessing to the whole Sunday School world if every Church 
in the land should put a copy into the hands of each 
of its teachers. He says : — 

" Despite much criticism upon the Sunday School, it 
yet stands, to-day, as the most direct agency we have for 
personal religious impression. In much discussion to-day, 
its evangelistic worth is entirely slighted, and attention 
wholly directed to the pedagogical features of the Sunday 
School, as if this were all it stood for. It does stand for 
instruction. But I wish to vindicate one of the functions 
of the Sunday School which it has always exemplified, 
and which it must keep vital if it have any distinctive 
place at all in our educational system. The mere educa- 
tional feature is distracting our teachers from one feature 
which has been for years the Sunday School's distinctive 
field, which still is, and which, even after changes come, 
still must be our great object : to bring our scholars to 
personal religious decision, and distinctive training in 
the Christian life. . . . Let the Sunday School never 
abdicate its throne." 

How shall we attain this end ? 

1. Not largely by preaching in the sense of exhorta- 
tion. "An ounce of preacher and a pound of teacher 
make a good mixture," said a speaker at the last World's 
Sunday School Convention. 

2. The lesson should be so presented that " out of the 
facts the truths must grow inevitably as the blossom 
bursts out of a tree because of the life that is within." 

A great many teachers stop with the facts, and do not 



62 THE FRONT LINE 

go through with the application by showing the relation 
of the truth to the life. 

It is your business to get that spiritual truth lodged 
in the heart and in the mind so that it never can be for- 
gotten again. But that is not all. You must see to it 
that that principle is applied in the life, and in making the 
application, the first step — in a sermon, in personal work, 
or in Sunday School work — is to make your truth concrete. 
A principle is always an abstract thing, and that abstract 
doctrine must be clothed in the terms of everyday life, 
flesh and blood, must be told in the shape that it is to be 
lived. It must be made concrete by illustrations, pictures, 
symbols, the story form, testimony, etc. 

Then the man is left to himself ; he must reach out his 
own hand and lay hold of the truth and take it into his 
heart by a voluntary choice. Then when he has chosen 
the truth he must turn it into action, voluntary action, 
and if he does that continually, the truth becomes a virtue 
of his character because he habitually lives it. Habitually 
living the truth is virtuous character. 1 

3. Three-fourths of the Bible is history and biography. 
It teaches not only by precept, but by life, by the divinely 
interpreted picture of the way men and nations were 
struggling to work out the commandments and purposes 
of God. While discussing these things the other day, a 
prominent minister and university professor said- to me 
that American history was better material for Sunday 
School study than Jewish history, for God is in modern 

1 Extracts from one of the most thoughtful addresses I ever read, on 
"The Secrets of Good Bible Teaching," by Professor Albert C. Wieand, 
delivered before the Bible Teachers' Training School of New York, and 
printed in TJie Bible Becord of September, 1904. 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 63 

history as really as in the history of the Jews, and it is 
closer to our modern life. 

God is in our history; God is as really guiding the 
Church now as in the days of the apostles. This is what 
Christ promised his disciples. But there is this differ- 
ence, — the Bible is not only divinely guided but divinely 
interpreted history. It is written by inspired prophets 
to show us the meaning of the history and of all history. 
And whenever we have a modern history written and 
interpreted by an inspired prophet, then modern history 
can be placed in the Sunday School alongside of Jewish 
history, and the later Church history beside the Acts. It 
is from close contact with divinely interpreted life that 
we are learning the applications to our own life and to 
modern history. 

I cannot express this truth better than in the words of 
Miss Marianna C. Brown in her Sunday School Movements 
in America : " Each child must, to some extent, live over 
again the world's struggles. If happily he is brought up 
as a spiritual plant and expands easily j^ear by year, he 
needs the study of man's spiritual development as shown 
in sacred history and literature, in order to enrich his life, 
to give him fuller appreciation of why others differ so 
much from him, and to make him understand the historic 
force of much that is about him, and is comparatively 
worthless except as commemorating struggles dear to the 
human race. . . . Bring him at least once a week into 
close personal contact with those who in person or sym- 
pathy have passed through rough waters, and stand firm 
on the Rock to ' stretch out a loving hand to wrestlers 
with the troubled sea.' " 

4. The life we live is " a motived life," and the teacher 



64 THE FRONT LINE 

is accomplishing his purpose when he presents, makes 
clear, distinct, vivid, inspiring, the motives to a Christian 
life presented by the lesson of the day. He desires to 
lead his scholars to that deep, soul-wide choice of good, 
of obedience to God his Father, and of allegiance to his 
Leader Jesus Christ, which is called conversion. It is 
the underlying choice which decides his whole life for 
good or for evil. 

But the teacher realizes that there are as many ways 
to this experience as there are gates to the City of God, 
which symbolizes the results of this experience. 

" Decision day " is helpful in many cases, if it is re- 
membered that in every life there are many decision days, 
decisions made in view of small duties, and daily tempta- 
tions, in which the one that makes them does not realize 
or dream that he is really making a life choice, as the 
slightest turn of the rudder in view of some obstacle may 
unconsciously in time circle the ship into an opposite 
course. 

5. The more personal application can best be made to 
each scholar alone, or when only two or three of the same 
mind are together. 

The wisest day school teachers I know are careful to 
avoid the effect on boys of what may be called the audi- 
ence. The head of a great Insane Asylum said to me that 
in managing his nervous patients he always avoided the 
effect of "the audience." A boy will steel himself against 
yielding when other boys are looking on, who will be 
quite amenable to reason when alone. Few are willing 
to express their inmost feelings and desires within the 
hearing of others. Get the boy alone ; let him feel that 
you are not a critic but a friend, that you are like your 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 65 

Master, who came " not to condemn the world, but that the 
world through Him might be saved." A very interesting 
and instructive example was given by Mr. John T. Prince, 
of the Massachusetts Board of Education, in an address 
before our Boston Superintendents' Unions. 

"A Sunday School teacher had a class of boys from 
twelve to fourteen years of age, who had greatly troubled 
the teachers for some time. Disorder and confusion had 
prevailed with every teacher, no teacher being willing to 
continue for any length of time. The person alluded to 
was a trained and experienced teacher, and it was con- 
fidently hoped that he could control them. This he did, 
but he was compelled to be severe in his attitude toward 
them, stopping by stern command any disposition on the 
part of members of the class to disorder or diversion of 
interest. He left his class each Sunday in an unhappy 
frame of mind, and approached each new recitation with 
an indefinable dread. . . . On one Sunday only three 
members of the class were present, and he was surprised 
to find how much more attentive and interested they were 
than they had been before. Moreover, the boys seemed to 
be more free in their responses and expressions of opinion. 
The teacher was encouraged to believe that there was a 
change for the better, but when a larger number of mem- 
bers were present there was the same restraint and ten- 
dency to disorder. The experience with the smaller 
number was repeated on several occasions, and on one 
Sunday it was repeated in such a way as to leave no doubt 
in the teacher's mind as to the cause of the difficulty. It 
was the occasion of a very stormy day when only one boy 
was present — the one who had given the most trouble in 
the class. On this day the teacher was much surprised 



66 THE FRONT LINE 

to find how thoughtful and interested the boy was in the 
subject of the lesson. He gave freely of his understand- 
ing of the subject, and asked pertinent and thoughtful 
questions. In short his entire attitude toward the Bible 
lesson was changed." 

6. Another most important method is to aid the scholar 
in applying the lesson immediately to his own conduct. 
Professor William James of Harvard, both in his latest 
book, Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and in his famous 
chapter on " The Psychology of Habit," urges this with all 
his power. These are good books for the teacher to study. 
His advice is, " Don't preach too much to your pupils or 
abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for 
the practical opportunities, and thus at one operation get 
your pupils to both think, and feel and do. The strokes 
of behavior are what give the new set to the character. 

" Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every 
resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting 
you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire 
to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in 
the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves 
and aspirations communicate the new ' set ' to the brain. 
Novel reading or theatre going, or even music, can pro- 
duce monsters in the way of people who feel but do not 
act. The remedy would be never to suffer oneself to have 
an emotion, say at a concert, without expressing it in some 
active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the 
world, — speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's 
seat in the horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers, — but 
let it not fail to take place ! 1 

1 See also Butler's Analogy, Part I, Chap. V, December 2, on active 
and passive habits. 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 67 

"Remember that every resolve you make, every good 
impulse thought of, but not acted upon, every intention 
to do good or to help the poor or to make some sacrifice, 
every motive that ends simply and solely in the pious 
wish, does infinite harm. Stamp the new ideal into the 
mind strongly and so vigorously that it remains fastened 
there, and even crops up at times when no need occurs. 
This is the point in pledge-signing, in oath-taking, in 
going before God's altar for impressiveness, etc. It 
makes a strong and powerful initiative ; it stamps in a 
vivid, never-dying, ineffaceable impression." 

7. Cause your class to learn by heart some choice pas- 
sage of Scripture which teaches in immortal words the 
main truth of the lesson. 

I once heard a musician lecture on the violin. He 
described the rare woods from which it was made, the 
half century or more it took to dry out all its sap, the 
seventy-two pieces of which it was composed, all strangers 
at first and requiring a century to become acquainted, 
like Kipling's "sweetening of the ship," till at last the 
whole instrument vibrates in harmony; and so for an hour 
of intense interest. I shall never forget it. But the end 
and aim of all this is the music. As another has said, 
u This is all well, but give us the music." There are a 
thousand things about the Bible that are of intense inter- 
est, that awaken enthusiastic study. But we cry out, 
"Give us the music." Give us the harmonies of charac- 
ter, and of life, the heavenly experiences, for which all 
these things exist. 

Many a teacher has lain down under Elijah's juniper 
tree utterly discouraged at his seeming failure. Yet as the 
Lord saw seven thousand faithful ones where the prophet 



68 THE FRONT LINE 

saw none, so the Lord sees rich fruits of the teacher's 
labors where the discouraged heart sees "nothing but 
leaves." 

Let a poem, with which Mead, in his Modern Methods in 
Sunday School Work, salutes his readers, be the angel of com- 
fort to help the wearied teacher to go on in his journey to 
the mount where he shall see the vision of God, and hear " the 
still small voice " which says, " Well done, good and faith- 
ful servant, . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 

" I wonder if he remembers — 

Our sainted teacher in Heaven — 
The class in the old gray schoolhouse 
Known as the ' Noisy Seven ' ? 

" I wonder if he remembers 
How restless we used to be, 
Or thinks we forget the lesson 
Of Christ and Gethsemane? 

" I wish I could tell the story 
As he used to tell it then ; 
I'm sure that, with Heaven's blessing, 
It would reach the hearts of men. 

" I often wish I could tell him, 

Though we caused him so much pain 
By our thoughtless, boyish frolic, 
His lessons were not in vain. 

" I'd like to tell him how Willie, 
The merriest of us all, 
From the field of Balaclava, 

Went home at the Master's call. 

" I'd like to tell him how Ronald, 

So brimming with mirth and fun, 
Now tells the heathen of India 
The tale of the Crucified One. 



THE TEACHER AND HIS CLASS 69 

" I'd like to tell him how Robert, 

And Jamie, and George, and ' Ray/ 
Are honored in the Church of God — 
The foremost men of their day. 

" I'd like, yes, I'd like to tell him 
What his lesson did for me ; 
And how I am trying to follow 
The Christ of Gethsemane. 

" Perhaps he knows it already, 
For Willie has told, maybe, 
That we are all coming, coming, 
Through Christ of Gethsemane. 

" How many besides I know not 
Will gather at last in Heaven, 
The fruit of that faithful sowing, 
But the sheaves are already seven." 

— Anonymous. 

It is recorded of one of the most distinguished painters 
of former days that when he was a mere boy, after view- 
ing a painting by Raphael for some time with silent trans- 
port, he suddenly broke out, with joy beaming in his 
countenance, as if he had found a treasure, " I, too, am a 
painter." 

Dr. Payson of Portland once said that if ministers 
realized the blessing and the opportunity God had con- 
ferred upon them, they would leap and shout for joy, cry- 
ing, " I am a minister of Christ ; I am a minister of 
Christ." 

If Sunday School teachers realized their privilege, the 
blessedness of teaching, of guiding children into the ways 
of life, they would exult, and glory, and give thanks, for 
" J, too, am a teacher of children ; I have a class in the 
Sunday School. " 



IV 



HOW CAN BUSINESS MEN AND BUSY WOMEN BEST 
PREPARE THEIR SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON? 

A neighboring pastor once asked me to come up to 
his church and talk to his Sunday School teachers, and 
the subject he wished me to speak upon was, " How can 
Business Men and Busy Women best Prepare their Sunday 
School Lessons?" 

I was then, as I always have been, a very busy man, 
and was just entering upon my present work, while at 
the same time pastor of a large and growing Church and 
Sunday School. I had, therefore, been compelled to study 
how to do the most work with the least friction, and to 
find out every possible labor-saving device that would 
give the best results. 

Some of these I will mention in this discussion, and 
will consider others when we come to Bible study for the 
Sunday School. 

Most ministers are the busiest of men, and nearly all 
the Sunday School teachers are taken, or ought to be 
taken, from the busiest men and women of their Churches. 
I am not speaking to you as ministers, but as those who 
are to help these busy men and women to do the best pos- 
sible work for their scholars. If you can gain from the 
simple things I may say any hint to busy men and women 
untrained in this direction, so much the better, but in the 

70 



PREPARING THE LESSON 71 

main you will doubtless work them out for yourselves, 
just as I have done. My chief qualification for helping 
teachers lies in the difficulties that I, as one of no special 
talents, have experienced and have been compelled to 
overcome as I could. You will learn in time, as I have 
learned, the truth of that Greek proverb, old as Herodotus 
and iEschylus, Ta pathemata mathemata, — The things 
we have experienced, our burdens, our difficulties, our 
struggles, our sufferings, are the things that teach us. 
I have always written slowly ; my thoughts do not easily 
crystallize into the best form ; but always I have tried to 
do "my level best." This standing on the level of the 
great majority is not without its advantages and consola- 
tions. I hear teachers, when some teaching genius speaks 
to them, say, Your words and plans are all right for a 
genius, but what help is there for us who are not geniuses, 
but just common people of ordinary talent? Please tell 
us what we can do. 

I think that for the teacher, and for the preacher so far 
as he is a teacher, the parable of the Pounds is more help- 
ful than the parable of the Talents ; that it is better for 
him to be one of the multitude to whom one pound is 
committed, provided he multiplies that one into ten, than 
to be one of the few who receive five talents, and only 
doubles them into ten. 

When I was pastor of a village church I used to try to 
keep the small grounds around my house as neat and 
beautiful as I could, and I experimented with various 
plants and methods to see how much could be done with 
the least labor and expense, hoping that others would 
take the hint and the appearance of the village be im- 
proved. Among other things I arranged a flower-bed in 



72 THE FRONT LINE 

front of the house and placed a fountain in the centre. 
One bright Saturday afternoon a minister, a stranger, came 
up the street to see me, and, seeing a fountain in front 
of the house to which he was directed, said to himself, 
" This cannot be the place ; a minister cannot afford to 
have a fountain," and he passed on to the next house. 
An hour later another minister did the same thing. And 
yet that fountain had an old paint keg for a base; on 
the top was nailed a large, discarded dish pan ; through 
them was placed a piece of rain-conductor left over when 
building the house; the whole was painted with some 
left-over paint, and the hose with an ordinary sprinkler 
was passed up through it. An old paint keg, a leaky 
dishpan, and a waste piece of conductor made a fountain 
that a minister could not afford to have ! 

That is a good illustration of what I propose to bring 
you to-day, so that no teacher need go away discouraged, 
as I have known teachers to be after hearing the ideal 
teacher portrayed at conventions. They determined to give 
up their classes because the star to which they were told 
to hitch their Sunday School wagons was too far beyond 
their reach. 

I. It goes without saying that every teacher means to 
be prepared. I am now speaking of special preparation 
for a particular lesson, not of that kind of preparation 
to which the minister referred " when he truly said he 
had been thirty years preparing his sermon, although, 
perhaps, the immediate preparation of the discourse had 
taken but a few hours. Thirty years' life, with its ex- 
periences, had gone into the sermon. According to 
Mr. Spurgeon, " a minister once said, ' Sir, I go into the 
pulpit and preach and think nothing of it,' and the one 



PREPARING THE LESSON 73 

to whom he made that remark said, ' And that is just 
what your people think of it.' If you can go to your 
class and teach as easily as possible without any prepara- 
tion, depend upon it as you think nothing of it your chil- 
dren will think nothing of it." Such men "toil not, but 
they spin." There is little use in talking to that teacher 
— rare as the dodo, I trust — who thinks that the Lord 
can or will do as good work through his ignorance as 
through his knowledge ; or who does not see the common 
sense of the farmer who advised his son to load his gun 
before he fired. 

II. Neither is it necessary to dwell upon the necessity 
of opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit, who alone can 
make our teaching effective. 

III. The keynote of the time-saving process is to fill the 
mind with the subject and main points of the lesson early 
in the week, preferably Sunday afternoon. Read over the 
lesson, read it in different translations, in the original if 
you can, or in the different languages you may know, each 
one flashing out light on some point or facet not seen so 
clearly in the others. Some truths, too, are brought out 
more distinctly by reading the passage aloud. 

Note that it is important to read the whole lesson and 
not merely the verses selected for printing in the Quarter- 
lies, "the gist of the lesson." The International Lesson 
Committee has always implied, and for a number of years 
has expressly stated with each lesson, that the lesson is 
more than the verses selected for printing and detailed 
study, but is a whole section of the history. And yet, 
there are not only teachers, but even lesson writers and 
wise critics who have "an acute attack of inadequate 
information " on this point. But no good teacher does 



74 THE FRONT LINE 

confine himself to the verses printed in the Quarterlies, 
nor do the best " helps." Read the whole lesson section 
carefully, if the lesson be historical ; and remember, if the 
lesson is doctrinal, that every great doctrine is revealed 
in several forms, in didactic statement, in history, in 
parable, in life, and in song, — and we need them all in 
order to see the doctrine as it really is. 

IV. The next time-saving, and at the same time soul- 
blessing, means is to use the next Sunday's lesson for some 
part of your daily devotional reading every day in the week. 
Use it for family prayers with your children. I have 
great faith in the power of looking — looking intently, 
steadily, continuously — at a single passage of Scripture 
till it is illuminated, transfigured. That is what Agassiz 
told his students to do in studying even a fish. That 
is what Professor Drummond said a naturalist must do 
in studying nature. " To watch uninterruptedly the 
same few yards of universe unfold its complex history; 
to behold the hourly resurrection of new living things, 
and miss no change or circumstance, even of its minute 
parts, to look at all, especially the things you have seen 
before a hundred times, to do all with patience and rever- 
ence — this is the only way to study nature." : 

I have heard two opposite opinions concerning such a 
use of one's devotional hours, from men known through- 
out the whole country. One declared that we should 
never take for our devotional reading the lesson we are to 
teach. The other said that it was the very soul and glory 
of devotion to do that very thing. My whole experience 
favors the latter view. Whenever a passage of Scripture 
touches my soul and sets it on fire, then I am prepared to 
1 Tropical Africa, p. 110. 



PREPARING THE LESSON 75 

kindle with it the souls of my pupils or my people. When- 
ever I have studied a scripture till I see in it a new mean- 
ing, till it inspires and uplifts me, makes me love God 
better, and my fellow-men, reveals to me a new vision of 
truth, then only am I best fitted to preach or to teach. 
Every powerful sermon is preached first to the minister 
himself, and after that to his congregation, and it tells on 
other people because he can say, " We speak that we do 
know, and bear witness of that we have seen." 

In one of his poems Browning relates a parable of the 
Two Camels, which needs no further interpretation than 
the telling. The two camels, beasts of price, both dedi- 
cated themselves to their master's service ; both were to 
carry for him precious burdens across the desert. One 
did all he could to save his master expense ; he ate the 
poorest food, and as little of it as possible, and then, by 
his lack of strength, he fell dead in the desert, thieves 
stole his pack, and his master had neither camel nor mer- 
chandise. The other camel ate the best food and ate all he 
needed, — " no sprig of chevril must I leave unche wed," — 
and was able to pass through the desert safely with his 
burden, and his master had both camel and burden. Feed 
yourself, if you would be strong to feed others. 

"Just as I cannot, till myself convinced, 
Impart conviction, so, to deal forth joy 
Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself." 

V. Next in order, still at the very beginning of the 
week, the right use of the best helps you can obtain, usu- 
ally of more than one kind. It is curious to note how 
some people object to Bible helps even for children, 
calling them crutches for the lame, in the very addresses 



76 THE FRONT LINE 

and books which they use to help people toward their 
views, and for which they have used helps all their lives. 

Everybody has to use helps ; the disputed question is at 
what period of our study we are to use them. 

My father taught me when a schoolboy, that in writing 
a composition I should think out the subject for myself 
before reading what others had said concerning it. Pro- 
fessor Amos R. Wells, one of the wisest men I know, says 
in his richly suggestive book on Sunday School Success, 
which all ought to study, and says with the emphasis of 
italics, " Let me emphasize this statement : Not a single 
lesson help should be touched until everything possible to 
be learned about the lesson from the Bible directly has 
been learned." 

Another writer expresses himself thus : " One reason 
why I have been myself averse to using the lesson journals 
is this : The matter is too convenient ; it tempts me to 
ignore the Bible, from which all inspiration for the work 
is derived ; it comes easily and I forget it as readily, and 
so the preparation is not clear and definite. The place 
for the Sunday School paper comes after you have mas- 
tered the knowledge in other ways." 

Now the teaching of my whole experience and observa- 
tion is this: Do not wait till you have thought out your 
subject, but begin early in your thinking to use what 
others have learned, and let the two processes go on to- 
gether. I am aware that this is somewhat heterodox, but 
it is both wisdom and truth for the persons whom I am 
advising. 

I am not writing for theological professors, nor for 
students who have unlimited time at their command, nor 
for men of genius who can use the above advice, but for 



PREPARING THE LESSON 77 

busy men and women, and for some busy ministers who may 
" taste the spices of Arabia, yet never feel the scorching 
sun which brings them forth." For them I can see only 
one wise way in which to get the most out of their time. 

Of course the Bible is to be first read, and its state- 
ments made familiar. I have no sympathy with the 
young man who some years ago came into a Sunday School 
bookstore in Boston and said he wanted to purchase a 
book called The Bible Wholly Commentary. He meant 
The Commentary Wholly Biblical. 

But in the early part of the week the busy man should 
use some good explanatory and suggestive helps. It is 
like a personally conducted tour of Europe. A wise and 
trained conductor, with a small party, will give the great 
majority of people, on their first tour, twice as much of 
the best things, in the same time, as they could gain by 
going alone. After that experience each one can go 
alone and make a detailed study with advantage. A man 
of wealth came to a period of leisure and tried to under- 
stand art. He went to art galleries, but returned unable 
to distinguish a good picture from a bad one. He said, 
"The idea that there must be a real, true value in art, 
and that I could not find it, took so strong a hold of me 
that I became restless, nervous, irritable." He went to 
an artist, who taught him, not how to paint, but how to 
see. He had the same experience with music, till a musi- 
cian taught him, not how to sing, but how to hear. They 
gave him what he could not obtain alone, — the way to a 
never-dreamed-of delight. 

1. It is necessary to get the true interpretation of the 
passage in order to think correctly at all. Then there 
are whole ranges of thought that the busy man is likely 



78 THE FBONT LINE 

to omit because he does not even know that they exist. 
He may easily miss the new light thrown upon the text 
by the study of the Bible as literature ; by the historic 
study which places each prophecy or event in its native 
historical setting ; by the meaning of particular words, 
such as " conversation," " instant," " offend," which is 
different from their meaning as used to-day. 

What is the use of going on thinking in the wrong 
direction and gathering materials which, as soon as one 
uses his " helps," must be discarded ? 

In our family, where there are no young children, we 
have found it both interesting and helpful to use the 
introductions in Moulton's Modern Reader s Bible, some- 
times spending a whole week on the introduction to a 
single book before we read the book itself. Of course, 
before that we have a general knowledge of the book ; 
but the reading the book in the light of his words has 
added greatly to its beauty and power. 

2. In the next place, the more material for thought one 
has the more valuable his thinking. Fill up the wells, 
and then you will no longer have the 

" Toil of dropping buckets into empty wells 
And growing old in drawing nothing out." 

3. Most of us can think better under the inspiration of 
others' suggestions. In the words of another : " Reading 
is really an invaluable help to the best thinking. It fur- 
nishes both the materials and an incentive to thinking. 
It stimulates the mind to put forth its best energies, while 
it broadens the field for thought ; and, in general, it may 
be said truthfully that he who does not read does not 
think much," 



PREPARING THE LESSON 79 

I well remember how, after I had wandered over the 
British Museum, especially those parts which throw light 
upon the Bible, I found a person who in a few moments 
pointed out things of great value, which I could not have 
learned by myself had I stayed there a year. After that 
I studied them for myself. Every reader and thinker has 
read books which have been to hirn almost like a new 
revelation. Every little while in my life I have come 
across such books, which have marked almost epochs in 
the development of thought and work. They have been 
like the secret doors in an old castle, unnoticed till pointed 
out by some one acquainted with them, and then opening 
into treasures of gold and art. 

4. Some wise man, in giving advice to writers, says : 
" Be original. ... In order to become original, one must, 
as a rule, go through a period of being deliberately imita- 
tive. One must soak one's self in the great stylists, 
Keats, Tennyson, Rossetti, etc., and then consciously adapt, 
borrow, and copy, until one finally learns to stand alone. 
The period of needing masters will pass in time, but one 
cannot be too teachable at first." 

This is wise advice for Sunday School teachers. Be 
original. Work out your own plan, according to your 
own natural bent and the kind of scholars you are teach- 
ing. But first saturate yourself with the text and the 
theme, and all the knowledge you can gain concerning 
them from every source. "Imitation," says Professor 
Home, " is a mere schoolmaster to bring us to originality." 

It is a waste of time to learn everything for one's self 
from the very beginning. The architect studies all the 
architecture of the world. The artist goes to all the great 
galleries and sees the best paintings genius has been able 



80 THE FRONT LINE 

to paint. Then, and only then, can each do his best 
original work. 

Yon must do your own work, you must be an original 
thinker, and work out the problems for yourselves ; you 
cannot be " carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease " 
which others have made. But you can be most original 
when you know what others have done before you, and 
you stand on the mountain tops the heir of all the ages, 
and climb higher and enjoy a wider vision. 

But if you cannot be original, you can choose from the 
best set before you by others, and standing on the moun- 
tains they have built is far better than to remain in the 
shadows of your own valley. 

VI. While using the Helps, still early in the week, you 
can form a clear idea of the framework or setting of the 
lesson. The more vivid it is to you, the better for those 
you are intending to teach. 

There are various simple methods of accomplishing this 
end. Mark in the Bible history the place where the 
prophets belong, writing their names on the margin. 
Make the geography clear by locating the places in your 
own neighborhood which have the same relations. Using 
your church as the centre, as symbolizing the Temple, you 
can in your own town represent every location in Jerusalem 
which Jesus has hallowed, by places or buildings at the 
same distances and in the same directions, making real 
how far Jesus went to Olivet, or the upper room, or the 
pool of Siloam, or to Calvary. You can realize the travels 
of Jesus, and of Paul, of the Exiles and their return, by 
distances and towns in your own state. 

In Tom Brown at Oxford the leading scholar is repre- 
sented as learning his Greek history by means of a map on 



PREPARING THE LESSON 81 

the wall, and pins with large heads made of sealing-wax 
of different colors. One army was represented by pins 
with red heads, the other by pins with black heads. Thus 
in the famous retreat of the ten thousand, wherever the 
armies encamped there the pins were placed, and were 
moved with every movement of the troops, so many para- 
sangs to this city, and so many to that, till the whole line 
of march was traced visibly on the wall. Not only was 
the history remembered better, but the distance, the direc- 
tions, the reasons for changes, the difficulties overcome, 
the skill and courage required, were seen as in no other 
way. 

During the Civil War, several ministers in my neighbor- 
hood carried out the same plan. Whenever any report 
came of a march or a battle, the pins were changed to cor- 
respond. We might easily have added pins with card- 
board fliers to indicate battle-fields. 

I once tried a similar experiment with the Intermediate 
Department of our Sunday School, following on the map 
the footsteps of Jesus. Some one of the scholars moved a 
large-headed pin to mark the places and directions where 
he went when teaching in Galilee or walking to Judea. 1 

1 Mr. Marion Lawrance, who has built up an almost ideal school in 
Toledo, Ohio, describes a very interesting plan used there : " We had a 
map of the Holy Land and Asia Minor. We were illustrating the mis- 
sionary work of Paul. The idea that the church was a bright light, and 
every Christian a light, was emphasized. The map was put upon a large 
soft pine board. Wherever there were churches, — for instance, at Jeru- 
salem, Antioch, Ephesus, etc., — a number of holes were punched into the 
board with an awl. In these holes were set parlor matches with the heads 
up. A row of holes marked out the pathway Paul travelled, first to Anti- 
och, then across to Asia Minor, and back and forth. Have the board set 
at a slight angle, so that it can be seen by the people in the room. The 
matches should be close enough together so that one would set fire to 



82 THE FRONT LINE 

This same plan, with some additions, may be followed 
with reference to any history in the Bible, either in the 
home or in the class, or. before the whole school. Pins 
with sealing-wax heads of different sizes and colors may 
represent the apostles and missionaries whose work is 
recorded. A box of cardboard letters, such as are 
used in the familiar letter games, can be obtained for 
a trifle, and the initial letters of the chief places can 
be fastened as fliers on pins, and mark the spots where 
the leading events take place as they are reached in 
the history. 

I well remember the first Chautauqua Reading Circle 
formed in my parish. We were reading Merivale's His- 
tory of Rome. We were meeting one evening at the house 
of a large farmer. We were trying to realize the scenes 
and events at Rome, which, at that time, none of us had 
seen. But we took a long woollen tippet, and curved it 
on the parlor floor as the Tiber curves through Rome. 
Milk pans placed bottom upward represented the Seven 
Hills of Rome — Capitoline, Aventine, Pincian, and all 
the rest. We marked the places where the historic events 
occurred. A piece of wood across the woollen Tiber 
showed where Horatius kept the bridge. We saw the 
Tarpeian Rock, the Forum, the Appian Way. So vivid 

another. At the right time in the exercises speak of what a great light in 
the world the Jerusalem Church was. If you have a dozen or more 
matches representing that church, the flame will rise a foot high. Pres- 
ently the line of matches will catch fire, and this will represent Paul 
starting out to Antioch. When he arrives there, there is another bright 
light representing the church at Antioch. Then he starts across to Cy- 
prus, etc., and to Asia Minor. Everybody in the room will be intensely 
interested to notice his travels as he goes. I would not recommend this 
indiscriminately, but it did well with us." 



PREPARING THE LESSON 83 

was the picture that when, later, I went to Rome, that 
crude Rome on the parlor floor helped me to more easily 
understand the great city. 

Take another instance. George Adam Smith, in his 
Geography of the Holy Land, pictures the scenery around 
the Well Harod, where Gideon and his three bands over- 
came the Midianites, so that it is easy to see the reasons 
for the choice of the three hundred. The well and the 
little stream that divided the armies are bordered with a 
thicket of tall reeds, so that any number of the enemy 
might be lurking there in ambush. The great majority 
of the citizen soldiers never thought of the danger, and 
kneeled down and drank from the stream where they 
would be helpless in a sudden attack. But there were 
three hundred, sharp, shrewd, wide awake, who, with their 
eyes on the forest of reeds, holding their weapons, merely 
stooping, threw the water with their hands into their 
mouths, and were never off their guard. 

These were the men Gideon wanted for his dangerous 
expedition. The dullest boy in the class will wake up 
and understand, when the teacher, who sees the picture 
himself, describes and gestures that scene. 1 Note how 
beautifully Whittier, in his Chapel of the Hermits, uses a 
similar method : — 

1 Bishop Vincent, in his Modern Sunday School, gives another illus- 
tration of this method : "A minister once located the principal characters 
of universal history on a single street, — a long street, many miles long, — ' 
chronologically so divided that his pupils could locate ' Alexander's house ' 
and the ' house of Moses ' and the ' house of Napoleon,' so that the street 
became a constant reminder of not only illustrious names in history, but 
a chronological guide always present. 'I passed,' said a little fellow, 
1 Alexander's house this morning on the way from the post-office, and it 
was not very far from the house of Aristotle.' " 



84 THE FRONT LINE 

" This maple ridge shall Horeb be, 
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee. 

" The heavens are glassed in Merrimac, 
What more could Jordan render back ! 

" We lack but open eye and ear 
To find the Orient's marvels here ; 
The still, small voice in autumn's hush, 
Yon maple wood the burning bush. 

" Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine." 

So much time has been consumed in describing these 
things that it may seem as if too large a proportion of the 
study hour had been devoted to them, to the exclusion of 
the spiritual and practical lessons. But, in fact, the very 
briefest time is taken up in any one lesson. They are 
the black wires which conduct the electricity to the lamps, 
of no use unless the current flows through them and the 
lamps are lighted. It is the teacher's business to light 
them. But they cannot be lighted without the wires. 
It is only dead pipes and wires painfully built up into 
the glass cross on the tall spire at Cohoes; but when 
lighted, that cross shines in symbolic glory over the 
whole landscape. 

VII. Early in the week must be formed a tentative 
plan of the lesson, in which the leading topics or thoughts 
shall stand out clear, distinct, vivid, living, all bearing 
on the one principal theme, which should be like the 
golden milestone of ancient Rome, the central focus of 
roads from every province of the Empire. 

Until this takes place the lesson is like the man in 
bottles in South Kensington Museum, or rather the rep- 
resentation of a man resolved into the chemical elements 



PREPARING THE LESSON 85 

of which his body is composed, each element there, in its 
due proportion, in a separate bottle, but not a man. The 
teacher is to be a new Frankenstein to recreate the ele- 
ments into a living, organized being. 

VIII. We are now prepared for that unconscious cere- 
bration, and what may be called crystallization, which are 
the chief time-saving processes in preparing the lesson. 
As a string in a saturated solution at rest will gather 
about itself crystals of that which is dissolved, so will a 
living thought in a full mind gather to itself other 
thoughts from every source and form definite crystals 
of truth. If you wish good flowers from a hyacinth 
bulb, you must put it away in the dark for weeks in 
order that it may become thoroughly rooted before the 
flower stalk rises into bloom. You will notice on the 
trees in autumn the buds which after sleeping all winter 
burst into leaves and blossoms in the spring. Why this 
long winter sleep is necessary I do not know. But it has 
its parallel in the operations of the mind. 

" When a man takes up a subject and holds it in his 
mind, now and then recurring to it and calling it up and 
looking at it, and then putting it back to sleep over it, he 
comes at length to its thorough mastery. It is a good 
thing to sleep over a subject." 

I am always glad to have the testimony of successful 
men to the things my own experience has taught me. Dr. 
William M. Taylor, in showing ministers how to prepare 
their sermons, gives his experience thus : " He will have 
work enough for two mornings at least in reading over in 
the original the passage that is to come in course on the 
next Sunday, and in carefully weighing all that has been 
written upon it by the commentators whose works are on 



86 THE FRONT LINE 

his shelves. Let him mark the thoughts that are of special 
importance in each, and read on until he is, as it were, 
saturated with his theme. Then in a wonderful way — 
which I can never explain to myself — he will find that, 
by the time he has read all his books of reference, his own 
thoughts have begun to crystallize, and perhaps all at 
once, almost with the rapidity of an electric discharge, 
the whole plan will open up to him, and he will see his 
way from the beginning to the end of his discourse. Let 
him take a note of that plan, and then leave it to simmer 
for a season." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table, gives his experience thus : " Physiologists and 
metaphysicians have had their attention turned of late to 
the automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. Put 
an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an hour, 
a day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to it. 
When, at last, you return to it you do not find it as it was 
when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to speak, — 
become at home, — entered into relations with your other 
thoughts, and integrated itself with the whole fabric of 
the mind." 

Amos R. Wells, in Sunday School Success, bears a like 
testimony: "These verses should be running through our 
heads as we run on all our six-day tasks, and should sing 
themselves to all our labor tunes. But chiefly, it is only 
in this way that we can accumulate hints, and grow into 
the truths of the lesson by experience. With the lesson 
theme for a nucleus, it is astounding to see what a wealth 
of illustration, of wise and helpful comment, each day's 
living thrusts upon us. Every event is a picture of some 
truth which needs only a sensitive plate to be photo- 



PREPARING THE LESSON 87 

graphed forever. That sensitive plate is a mind which 
is studying that particular truth." 

I always have some of these living magnet-truths in my 
mind, and they are continually gathering around them- 
selves something from every source. They make one's 
mind not like the Nile which flows two thousand miles 
without a tributary, but like the Amazon which drains a 
continent for its waters. Every book I read, on what- 
ever subject, every experience, all intercourse with others, 
travel, picture galleries, factories, fields and forests and 
cities, — everything contributes something to the subjects 
in mind. For this reason I hate to read a book that I do 
not own, for I want to mark its margins, and note special 
pages on the fly-leaf for easy reference and review. 1 

IX. Another method for making the most of a limited 
time and opportunity is to make your class co-laborers, 
working partners, with you. Enlist their services. Give 
them something to look up, or to think upon. Show them 

1 " Some time ago I heard the following definition of a true scholar. 
A scholar, it was said, is a man who knows something of everything and 
everything of something. By all means let our ministers know some little 
about everything. A quaint divine some years ago was bidding good-by 
to one of his students whose stock of information on some subjects was 
very meagre, and he said : ' Now, young man, take care you keep the 
door of your empty rooms carefully locked.' Oh, those empty rooms ! 
When iron is magnetized it attracts other fragments of iron. So, if there 
is any one subject on ivhich the mind is always brooding, the mind becomes, 
as it were, magnetic on that subject. All kinds of facts, truths from every 
field, jump to it and stick to it. This is the secret of success in every 
department of learning, and emphatically is it true of the Christian 
minister. Every preacher to be successful must have his mind magnetized 
by Gospel truth, and then whatever he reads will be attracted to some 
Scripture text or other to illustrate or explain it. There can be no success 
in any other way." Makshall. 



88 THE FRONT LINE 

where they can find a good example or illustration. Let 
one look up the geography, another draw a map, another 
find the best verse, another can suggest what the class can 
do in practising the lesson. 

For many years I was a member of a Shakespeare class 
in my -parish (I am still an honorary member). We were 
busy men and women, ministers, lawyers, judges, doctors, 
teachers, business men, and busy women. We met to 
study, but had scant time for special preparation. Each 
one was appointed to do something to bring to the class, 
look up the history of the play, its sources, the historical 
facts upon which it was founded, the characteristics of 
the persons, etc., so that while each of us could do but 
little, there was some one with fresh information on every 
point, and I learned more literature in that club than in 
my whole college course. 

X. Lastly, a Teachers' Meeting is a great saving of time. 
There is something in the contact of soul with soul that 
no reading of books can give. It is life that kindles life. 
There are people who never suggest anything, who are 
like a wet blanket, and make you feel dull, and wonder 
whether you are not losing your intellect. Another man 
will wake you up, kindle new thoughts, suggest bright 
sayings till you are surprised at your own brightness and 
fertility of thought. Those are the ones you wish to 
meet at the teachers' meeting. There is truth, too, in 
O. W. Holmes's statement that he often talked in order 
to crystallize his own thoughts. Separate embers will 
die out, but when piled together they will kindle into 
a blaze. An artist wishing to paint a portrait of Shake- 
speare had his death-mask photographed from twenty 
points of view. We need other minds to present a 



PREPARING THE LESSON 89 

subject from all points of view in order to see it as it 
really is. 

The methods described above are among the greatest 
educating forces for busy men and women. No one can 
have these great subjects living in their minds, and 
gathering other thoughts to them, and be compelled to 
make them so vivid, so accurate, so practical that they 
can teach them, without himself becoming educated. 
The Sunday School is the teacher's postgraduate course. 

In the new Congressional Library at Washington this 
motto is written over one of the alcoves, — " To the 
souls of fire, I, Pallas Athense, give more fire, and to those 
who are manful a might more than man's." 



TEACHER TRAINING, "AN EDUCATION FOR THE 
EDUCATOR" 

I. The Most Urgent Problem before the Sunday School 
World of To-day is how to obtain Teachers trained for 
their Work; which practically means, How to train for 
their work, those in our churches (1) who are teachers 
in the Sunday School, (2) those who ought to be teachers, 
and (3) those who are growing up to become teachers. 

There is no discord among educators on this point. We 
can say of it as Emerson said, when some one spoke in his 
presence of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence 
as " Glittering generalities." "Glittering generalities!" 
said Emerson, " They are blazing ubiquities." 

The need of better-trained teachers is " a blazing ubiq- 
uity." It is present in every school, in every college, in 
every Sunday School. It is omnipresent in books on edu- 
cation, secular or religious. 

Professor Seeley in The Foundations of Education : " It 
is a well-established pedagogical maxim that the most im- 
portant element of an educational system is the qualified 
teacher." 

B, F. Jacobs : " Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson tells us 
that the childhood of this generation is crying out ''Edu- 
cate my mother!' If transposed to read, ' Educate my 

90 



TEACHER TRAINING 91 

teacher," it will voice the heart and life cry of many chil- 
dren who do not yet know of their great need and how to 
ask for it." 

Resolution adopted by the Fourth World's Sunday School 
Convention held at Jerusalem in the spring of 1904 : — 

" While reaffirming that the first essential work of the 
Sunday School teacher is to bring the pupil to a saving 
knowledge of Jesus Christ and to strengthen his life in 
him, this convention declares its conviction that one of the 
greatest needs of the Sunday School is a higher efficiency 
on the part of our teachers, and it greatly desires to see 
improved plans of teacher-training more widely extended. 
We heartily commend the plan of the International Exec- 
utive Committee in appointing a special educational com- 
mittee to promote this work. 

Dr. Arnold of Rugby : " It is clear that in whatsoever 
it is our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to 
study." 

President Eliot : " The actual problem to be solved is 
not what to teach, but how to teach." 

Shakespeare : — 

" Ignorance is the curse of God, 
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." 

— 2 Henry IV. 

Professor Miinsterberg, in his American Traits : " Just 
as it has been said that war needs three things, (1) Money, 
(2) Money, (3) and again MONEY, so it can be said with 
much greater truth that Education needs not forces, and 
buildings, not pedagogy and demonstrations, but only Men, 
Men, and again MEN — without forbidding that some, 
not too many of them, shall be women." 

Professors Burton and Mathews in Principles and 



92 THE FRONT LINE 

Ideals : " If the Sunday School is a real educational insti- 
tution, can it be carried on by untrained teachers? " 

This is not a new movement. Training classes for 
Sunday School teachers were instituted in England as 
early as 1856, and in the same year Mr. Frater " urged the 
establishment of Sunday School colleges in all large towns 
for training senior scholars to become teachers." The 
movement in this country began at least as early as the 
International Lessons, and has been earnestly urged by 
the committee from the beginning. 

But in the present age there is a greater emphasis upon 
it, a deeper feeling of its need, and a vastly greater oppor- 
tunity. 

II. The Present Status. — It is quite impossible to deal 
wisely with the present situation without a fairly accurate 
knowledge of what that situation is. 

One of the most difficult things is to discover just what 
is the real character of the teaching in the Sunday School. 
When I hear from ministers in conventions and read the 
characterizations of the Sunday School teachers made by 
editors and learned college professors, which all my obser- 
vation declares to be caricatures, or at best like the huge 
genie towering from the tiny box of the fisherman, I can- 
not help inquiring how many of their facts are derived 
from imagination or childhood's memories, and how much 
from actual knowledge of the present-day Sunday Schools. 
In how many classes have they, within the last few years, 
sat and heard the teaching ? 

Without doubt the severe indictments of Sunday School 
teaching are made by contrasting the good average teach- 
ing with the highest ideals ; just as the best saints confess 
their sins, far more earnestly than bad men do theirs, be- 



TEACHER TRAINING 93 

cause the saints have vastly higher ideals. But as Theo- 
dore Parker once said of these same saints that if their 
confessions were true, they ought to go to state prison, 
so these contrasts between the actual teaching and the 
loftiest ideals, which the best teachers feel the most, give 
a wrong impression to the common mind. 

It is well known that Dr. A. J. Gordon, late pastor 
of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church of Boston, early 
in his ministry had a dream or vision as real as Peter's 
vision on the housetop in Joppa. 1 He saw Christ in his 
congregation, and looked as through Christ's eyes upon 
everything pertaining to his preaching, the services, and 
the Church. That vision changed his preaching and the 
whole atmosphere and work of his Church. 

Now if Christ came to our Sunday Schools and sat be- 
side the teacher, what would he see ? He would see the 
evil, of course, as Stead saw the evil in Chicago, in his 
book, If Christ came to Chicago. But he would look at it, 
not as a policeman looking for crime, but as a good physi- 
cian looks at disease, as something to be lovingly cured. 
Under such a look as Christ gave to Peter, the unfaithful 
teacher would go out and weep bitterly. 

But I am sure that Christ would look at the Sunday 
School far more as Edward Everett Hale represents him 
in How Christ came to Boston, looking chiefly for the good. 

He would see I know not how many teachers who do 
not know what to teach nor how to teach. How they 
came to be teachers it is hard to tell. They may have 
been the only ones available. They may have wanted to 
do some good for which they were not fitted by nature or 
by grace. They may have had a dim idea of duty, with- 
1 See How Christ came to Church, Baptist Publication Society. 



94 THE FRONT LINE 

out any real will to do their best. I trust there are not 
many. We can only say of them the couplet some one 
has written in answer to Whittier's lines — 

" Of all sad words of tongue and pen, 
The sadd'st are these, ' it might have been,' " 

suggesting that 

" A sadder thing we sometimes see, 
It is, but it ought not to be ! " 

And yet in my own heart I cannot but feel that even for 
these Whittier's following lines are not only better poetry, 
but deeper truth : — 

" Ah, well ! for us some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes, 
And in the hereafter angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away." 

Again he would see a large number of the best and 
most intelligent people in the community, educated men, 
teachers in the day schools, saints who have lived on the 
Bible, skilled business men, mothers who have trained 
their own children well, and thus learned to train the 
children of others, women who give time and strength 
and brains to teaching, the leaders of thought and influ- 
ence. There is a large amount of truth in the words of 
B. F. Jacobs, than whom few knew more about Sunday 
School teaching, that " God had skimmed the cream of 
the Church and put it into the Sunday School." I would 
go farther, and say that by means of the Sunday School 
God was transforming the skim-milk of the Church into 
cream. 

Then Christ would see the great body of Sunday School 
teachers, men and women of medium intelligence and abil- 



TEACHER TRAINING 95 

ity, of moderate education and opportunity, of fair faith- 
fulness, and a general desire to do their best for their 
scholars. The great majority of these have had compara- 
tively little training in how to teach, and incomplete train- 
ing in what to teach. But most of them are not entirely 
untrained for their work. Technical training is only a 
part of teacher training, as we shall see. And it is impos- 
sible for the Sunday School work to be done without these 
teachers, and most of them do good work, often very good 
work, though not the best possible. 

The most hopeful element in the situation is the large 
and rapidly growing interest in the training of teachers, 
and the increasing opportunities for that training. The 
better the teachers, the more they feel the need of train- 
ing. The same spirit is abroad to-day which a late ad- 
dress describes as inspiring our forefathers. " Six years 
after the founding of Boston, our forefathers, only a few 
thousand in number, scattered thinly from Ipswich to 
Cohasset and Watertown to Boston, while still in danger 
of starvation and, as one chronicler puts it, ' of rattle- 
snakes by day and savages by night,' founded Harvard 
College 4 Christo et Ecclesiae.' They determined that 
the culture of the mind should begin with the culture of 
the soul." 

And still more hopeful is the fact that the training of 
teachers means the training of the whole Chnrch. Parents 
need the training as really as teachers, and the means by 
which teachers are trained are largely open to the whole 
community. 

III. The Kind of Training depends on the Purpose and 
Aim of the Teaching in the Sunday School. — This is so 
obvious a truth that it needs but to be stated to be 



96 THE FRONT LINE 

accepted as true. And yet not a little of the criticisms 
of the teaching force, and not a few of the discussions of 
teacher training ignore this obvious truth, or lay wrong 
emphasis upon the different elements of the training. 

Bishop Vincent is right in saying, " As nearly every- 
thing in the School depends upon the teacher, so nearly 
everything in the teacher depends upon his aims." 

IV. The Next Step therefore is for the Teacher to have 
Clearly and Definitely in Mind what he means to accomplish 
by his Teaching. What is the supreme end of Sunday School 
teaching, and what subordinate aims minister to it, or have 
a value in themselves ? I will name them in the order of 
their supremacy, of their dependence one on the other. 

(1) The supreme and ultimate aim of Sunday School 
teaching is perfect Christian character and the life which is 
its natural expression. It is the attaining "unto a full- 
grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ." 1 The forming of the best character is now 
regarded by educators as the highest aim of all educations. 
Let me put it before you from four points of view stated 
by four men of both experience and power : — 

"In the contrast so often made to-day between the 
day school and the Sunday School, remember this," says 
Professor Merriam, "that what is primary in the day 
school is secondary in the Sunday School, and what is fun- 
damental in the one place is only incidental in the other ; 
that is, your main purpose is moral and spiritual. The 
main purpose of the day school is intellectual. What the 
day school does indirectly in ethical influence is your 
direct object — to form the spiritual character of that 
group of young people." 

lEph. 4:13. 



TEACHER TRAINING 97 

" It is an admirable thing," said President Roosevelt, 
the other day, in addressing a school, " a most necessary 
thing, to have a sound body. It is an even better thing 
to have a sound mind. But infinitely better than either 
is it to have that, for the lack of which neither sound 
mind nor a sound body can atone — character. Character 
is in the long run the decisive factor in the life of 
individuals and of nations alike. Sometimes, in rightly 
putting the stress that we do upon intelligence, we for- 
get the fact that there is something that counts more. 
It is a good thing to be clever, to be able and smart ; but 
it is a better thing to have the qualities that find their 
expression in the Decalogue and the Golden Rule." 

Professor Sanders's : " The aim of all Sabbath School 
work is, or ought to be, the building up of character. 
This gives a wider and truer range to it than that 
which is given by the usual definition. It includes the 
forming of the being, the reaching of the mind in all 
its departments, and treats it as a single entity." 

In the words of the lamented Professor Henry Drum- 
mond : " The image of Christ that is forming within us — 
that is life's one charge. Let every project stand aside 
for that. 4 Till Christ be formed,' no man's work is 
finished, no religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its 
end. Is the infinite task begun ? When, how, are we 
to be different? Time cannot change men. Death 
cannot change men. Christ can. Wherefore ' put on 
Christ.' " 

(2) The supreme choice of righteousness, of God as our 
Father, and of Christ as Saviour and as the embodiment of 
all that is good, that is, a supreme love of God, of Christ, 
and of duty, is an essential condition of obtaining the 



98 THE FKONT LINE 

highest character. That is conversion, the new birth, 
the beginning of a new life which is to grow unto perfec- 
tion, a continued and eternal living of the heavenly life. 

Education cannot take the place of this new life. 
" Education alone," says Herbert Spencer, in his Social 
Statics, " never makes a man better. Creeds pasted on 
the memory, good principles learned by rote, lessons in 
right and wrong, will not eradicate vicious propensities. 
. . . All history, both of the race and the individual, 
goes to prove that in a majority of cases precepts do not 
act at all. . . . But if you make virtue loved and vice 
loathed, if you arouse a noble desire, if you bring into 
life a previously dormant sentiment, ... if, in short, 
you produce a state of mind to which proper behavior 
is natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good." 
This expresses the need of religion behind education, 
the value of revivals, of decision days, of believing on 
Christ. 

After that, education and culture have almost unlimited 
power. Inoculate the wild brier with the rose, and all 
the culture which would only make the wild brier a more 
luxuriant brier, but never a rose, will make it bring forth 
more beautiful roses more abundantly. " Golden conduct 
does not proceed from leaden instincts." 

In a late story we read: " ' You can educate men, mon- 
keys, and pigs,' said the young professor of English 
Literature, ' but when you have done, you still have men, 
monkeys, and pigs. College cannot change the nature of 
the trainee, but it does rub off one husk, and show one 
central kernel. If there be a man there, college training 
but brings out the man.' " 

A teacher said, " I would rather, a thousand times 



TEACHER TRAINING 99 

rather, any pupil of mine should fail in every examination 
than to fail once in honor or chivalry." 

It is this supreme motive that transforms all that is 
secular into the sacred for them that have it. 

(3) The training of the will is therefore one of the 
essential elements of education. The child is to be trained, 
guided, to make right choices, in all the hourly matters 
which present themselves for a decision between right 
and wrong, between good and evil. 

It is by these acts of choosing that character is formed 
and confirmed. According to Dr. Forbush in The Boy 
Problem, " the public school fails in will-training because 
it gives the will no exercise. ' Our schools,' says William 
I. Crane, ' permit us to think what is good, but not to do 
what is good.' " 

I cannot do better than to state the case in the words 
of Professor R. Sanderson, superintendent of the city 
schools of Burlington, Iowa, in a remarkably clear and 
able address before the city Sunday School Union : — 

" This is the preordained path by which the individual 
attains to Christian character, determined by the natural 
workings of the human mind, — thinking, feeling, willing, 
— and in this order. It is impossible for a man to feel 
unless there is an object presented ; it is impossible to will 
unless the intellect has taken cognizance of a fact, and 
a sufficient amount of feeling is aroused in the contem- 
plation of it. Before an intelligent act becomes possible, 
there must be knowledge, feeling, and willing. It is not 
necessary that the knowledge be either exhaustive or com- 
plete ; still there must be enough to make the affections 
prompt the will to choose actively the 'doing' or 'not 
doing.' . . . 



LcfC. 



100 THE FRONT LINE 

" Theoretically, that man has a perfect character whose 
intellectual perceptions arouse corresponding affections 
and terminate in appropriate willing and acting. This 
places character not in intelligence, not in large-hearted- 
ness, not alone in acting, but in a happy harmony and 
equipoise of all these. And the difference between men 
chiefly consists in the infinitely various ways in which these 
three departments of our nature act, interact, and react. . . . 

"That man alone has a right character whose right 
thinking terminates in right acting, whose every thought 
has its appropriate emotion and willing." 

Note that while in the Sunday School there is but 
moderate opportunity for giving the will exercise, as in 
attention, faithfulness, reverence, kindliness, obedience, 
yet the Sunday School teaching is geared on to the daily 
life at home, and the teaching is scarcely done before the 
child has abundant exercise for his will in putting the 
teaching into practice. 

Note that through the minor choices the child is trained 
to make the supreme choice of his life. 

Note that the supreme choice is often made in view of 
some small act close at hand in everyday experience, when 
the chooser does not at all realize the full measure of its 
content. He makes a choice of a right instead of a wrong 
act, and it is the beginning of a new life of serving and 
obeying Christ, the sum of all righteousness. Hence it 
so often happens that people brought up under Christian 
influences are not conscious of any definite time when 
they became Christians, while those before whom came 
the clearly defined choice of Christ or the world know 
definitely when they made their life decision. 

Note again, that while every day is a " decision day," 



TEACHER TRAINING 101 

yet it is of great value to a young person to come face to 
face with some question when he must decide openly and 
positively where he will stand, through which decision he 
shall become conscious of his real position, and confirmed 
in it. Professor E. W. Scripture of Yale, in his book 
of psychological experiments, Thinking, Feeling, Doing, 
proves that in order to realize feelings, as of hot and cold, 
there needs to be a sudden change. In holding a spoon 
on the flame of a lamp, " when the heat was gradually 
increased it was scarcely noticed, but when suddenly in- 
creased it was clear at once." Although a frog jumps 
readily when put in warm water, yet a frog can be boiled 
without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough. 
"From psychological writers we have heard it repeated 
ad nauseam that there is no consciousness without change. 
These facts illustrate the necessity of sudden impulses, of 
great revivals, reformations, political excitements, unex- 
pected results, to awaken a community to its needs or its 
dangers." Decision days are coming into use for the same 
reason. 

(4) The ivill is trained by presenting the motives which 
lead to action. The will always acts in view of motives. 

"The driving power which brings to the point of de- 
cision may be vivid emotion, or keen sorrow, or painful 
repentance, or the impulse of a high resolve, or the woo- 
ing of a great love, or a kindled passion after good and 
purity. But all the roads converge to this point of solemn 
reflection, when a man considers his life in the light of 
God's presence." 1 

The work of the Sunday School is like the work of the 
Church, as expressed by Professor Peabody of Harvard. 
1 Rev. Hugh Black of Edinboro. 



102 THE FRONT LINE 

" It is not one more machine of social service ; it is a 
source of power for social service. That is the place of 
a true Christian Church. It is a power-house." Mark 
Twain hit it when he said, "The art of preaching is to 
influence you." The work of the teacher is to so present 
motives that his scholars will make the right choice and 
form the best characters. 

Hawthorne, in one of his stories, describes a character 
which was paralyzed in the realm of motives. The man 
would look out of his window at the world, but felt him- 
self as utterly detached from it as a door detached from 
its hinges, and as useless. The sign in the window, "To 
let," describes exactly the state of the man's motives ; and 
the words Qui bono ? — " What is the use ? " were fastened 
upon every rising intention. The teacher is to give life 
and action to the realm of motives. 

"Inasmuch," says Commissioner W. T. Harris, "as the 
child is self-active, and grows only through the exercise 
of self-activity, education consists entirely in leading the 
child to develop this power of doing. Any help that does 
not help the pupil to help himself is excessive." 

(5) " The prescribed way — prescribed by nature — of 
reaching the will is, as related above, by presenting to the 
intellect facts which shall arouse the emotional nature." 
These facts, for the teacher of the Sunday School, are 
chiefly the teachings of the Bible, illustrated in Bible 
history, biography, and literature, and experienced by 
the teacher himself. The Bible is the teacher's text-book. 
No other book has had or can have the power which this 
Book has, presenting as it does the greatest truths revealed 
by God and adapted to man, meeting every need, quench- 
ing every thirst ; the bread of life to the hungry ; forgive- 



TEACHER TRAINING 103 

ness for the sinful ; hope, life, immortality for all. It is 
the great, abiding, inspired truths of redemption, em- 
bodied in Jesus Christ, made mighty by His atoning love, 
and illuminated and enforced by the presence of the Holy 
Spirit, that can present the motives which lead to right 
choices and thence to Christian character. " The Church 
should never forget the saying of Coleridge, that no reli- 
gious emotion is profitable except such as is produced by 
the view of some truth." But most of all by a clear vision 
of Him who was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of 
grace and truth. 

(6) In addition to the character forming truths, there is 
very much to be taught from the Bible, that belongs to the 
divine setting of these truths, and therefore of great im- 
portance to the right understanding of them, and to their 
impression on the minds of our scholars. The geography, 
the history, the forms of literature, the connection with 
secular history, the location of the Prophets and Epistles 
in their historical environment, and all that is referred to 
in the chapters on Methods of Bible Study for the Sun- 
day School belong under this category. 

V. Having accepted the necessity for trained teachers, 
observed the present teaching force, realized that the kind 
of training depends on the aim of Sunday School instruc- 
tion, and having studied that aim in its various aspects, 
we are now prepared to consider — 

What are the kinds of training which prepare the Sunday 
School teacher for his work, and what is the proper empha- 
sis to be laid upon each of them ? 

First. Character training stands far above all others, 
for character is the greatest human agency known for 
inspiring character in others, and that is the supreme 



104 THE FRONT LINE 

object of Sunday School instruction. Character produces 
character ; love awakens love ; life is the only known 
source of life ; religious life kindles religious life in 
others ; and there is nothing can take its place for this 
end: Bible truth lived, Bible truth expressed in human 
character, Bible truth illustrated and explained in daily 
life, in "living epistles known and read of all." Souls 
grow by contact with other souls. The larger and fuller 
the spirit with whom we come into touch, and the more the 
points of contact, the more free and strong is our growth. 
Plautus says that "an eye witness is worth more than 
ten thousand ear witnesses." 

Hon. S. B. Capen says, " Fellow-teachers, let us never 
forget in all our work that our words will never go any 
farther than our own lives will carry them. Back of the 
teacher and the teaching is the man himself, and not what 
we say but what we are will determine the force of our 
message. Emerson's words are forever true, ' What you 
are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.' ' 

I know of no discordant note among educators in the 
testimony that " the greatest thing a teacher ever brings 
to a child is not the subject-matter, but the uplift which 
comes from heart contact with a great personality." x 

Professor Luther H. Gulick of New York, after a per- 
sonal inquiry among leading men of the city as to the 
source from which they had gained most from their Sun- 
day School experience, found that the scheme of lessons, 
the age or sex of teachers, had small influence compared 
with the character of the teachers. 2 

1 An Ideal School, Chap. XII. 

2 Proceedings of the second annual meeting of the Religious Education 
Association. 



TEACHER TRAINING 105 

In the Forum for March, 1896, President Charles F. 
Thwing records the results of " a very interesting study 
of fifty representative men to questions involving the best 
thing college does for a man. The entire drift of the testi- 
mony was that the most these men got from the college 
was inspiration from life contact with great leaders. The 
subject-matter of the college received a very small per- 
centage of credit." 

Dr. Parkhurst remarks, " While books can teach, per- 
sonality only can educate." 

"The most influential thing in the world," says Pro- 
fessor Whitney, " is, we suppose, what men see in other 
people's lives." 

"No nobler feeling," says Carlyle, "than admiration 
for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. 
It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence 
in man's life." 

President Hadley, of Yale, says in a late article, " All 
the moral precepts which are taught, even by those great 
head masters who have the greatest reputation as moral 
teachers, are of little consequence as compared with the 
personality of those teachers themselves." 

The ancient Persian monarchs acted on this principle 
when, according to Xenophon's Memorabilia, they selected 
for the training of their princes the four best men in their 
kingdom, — the wisest man, the most just man, the most 
temperate man, and the bravest man, — men who could 
teach the virtues well because they had experienced them, 
men who could illustrate them by living examples. 

In his Mosses from an Old Manse Hawthorne tells a 
weird story of a chemist named Rappacini, who was in- 
vestigating the nature of poisons, and had a charming 



106 THE TKONT LINE 

garden in which every plant and flower was poisonous. 
His beautiful daughter lived in this poison atmosphere 
till her whole nature became poisonous, so that at length 
flowers withered at her touch, insects flitting before her 
fell dead in her breath, and even spiders and reptiles per- 
ished, scorched and convulsed by her presence. And a 
young student, attracted by her beauty to walk in that 
Eden of poisons, was at length astonished and enraged to 
find himself, even by this partial abode there, so impreg- 
nated with the poison that the flies and spiders of his 
room withered in death when he breathed upon them, and 
this poison fragrance surrounded him everywhere like an 
atmosphere. 

The reverse of this is still more true. Ingersoll is re- 
ported to have said that if he had been God, he would 
have made health catching instead of disease. But God 
has made moral good more catching than moral evil. 
Life has vastly more propagating power than death. We 
cannot communicate to others what we do not possess 
ourselves. The power of the preacher lies in the man 
behind the sermon. The power of the teaching lies in the 
teacher behind the teaching, so that the scholar can find — 

" His being working in my own, 
The footsteps of his life in mine." 

Here, then, is the supreme sphere of teacher training. 
Let us note several things in reference to it. 

(1) This kind of teacher training is too often left out 
of the account or taken for granted, with the result of 
discouragement to good teachers, of a wrong emphasis on 
the work of training, and of a wrong principle of selec- 
tion. The greatest danger in that excellent and neces- 
sary training so much insisted upon is well expressed by 



TEACHER TRAINING 107 

Spurgeon's illustration of a " servant who was desired by 
his master to carry a present of fish to a friend and to do 
it as quickly as possible. In all haste the man seized a 
basket and set out; but when he reached his journey's 
end he became a laughing-stock, for he had forgotten the 
fish ; his basket was empty. Teacher ! Preacher ! let not 
the like happen to thee." We cannot carry the fish with- 
out the basket, but the basket is of no use if it is empty. 

(2) It is a teacher training that all can enjoy. 

(3) It is gained through faithfulness in ordinary daily 
life, in business, in the home ; amid cares and burdens 
and sorrows, personal trials and victories; through pri- 
vate communion with God and daily study of His Word. 

(4) It is the preparation and training which uplifts 
the Church as well as the Sunday School. 

(5) It furnishes a new inspiration for better living, for 
leaving off doubtful habits, for more earnest efforts for 
the better life, for larger victories over evil, because all 
these things are to have an effect upon the scholars under 
our care. 

(6) And lastly this kind of training naturally leads to 
all other kinds of training which will make this kind most 
effective. A well-balanced character will never expect 
results without means, nor the best results without the 
best means at hand. The Holy Spirit continually uses 
means. The twelve fishermen Apostles were mighty 
when filled with the Spirit, but they had first been two 
or three years in the school of Christ. 

" When one claimed that education was unnecessary 
because the Holy Spirit would guide into all truth, and 
added, ' The Lord can do without my knowledge,' a fitting 
rebuke was administered in the reply, ' Yes, but the Lord 



108 THE FRONT LINE 

can do still better without your ignorance.' ' Pour your 
teaching out of a full reservoir, not out of a pint cup.' ' 

Second. The teacher is to be trained in knowledge of the 
Bible, the intellectual and spiritual material he is to teach. 
He needs a thorough acquaintance with it in every respect. 
He must know Christ, in order to teach Him, and under- 
stand the very soul of His teachings in order to teach these. 

The queen bee is produced from a common worker by 
being placed in a larger cell and fed with richer and more 
abundant food. The soul of the teacher expands, grows 
more beautiful, more powerful for good by more abundant 
feeding on the Bread of Life. 

Third. The teacher needs a training in the art of teach- 
ing in the best methods of presenting, enforcing, illustrat- 
ing, and applying the Bible truths. For teaching is an 
art to be learned. It has its laws and principles, and new 
light is being thrown upon the subject every day. 

Some people are born with a genius for teaching ; all 
the more will they gain from training, and all the more 
earnestly will they seek the training. But most have 
merely possibilities and need training in the art of teach- 
ing in order to make the possibilities realities. The How 
to teach is secondary in importance only to the What to 
teach in the work of religious instruction. "Education 
is not less a science, nor is teaching less an art because 
the exclusive subject of instruction is moral and religious 
truth." 1 

The most learned men are often very poor teachers. I 
frequently hear of men like the following : — 

" One of the best Bible scholars that the writer has ever 

1 Henry Dunn, 1837. See Mr. W. H. Groser's A Hundred Years' 
Work for the Children, p. 103. 



TEACHER TRAINING 109 

been privileged to meet was one of the worst teachers that 
ever plagued a class." 

And this from A. H. McKinney, Ph.D. : — 

" My friend, the professor, is a veritable encyclopaedia. 
His fund of information is seemingly inexhaustible. His 
knowledge of, and fluency in, several languages is aston- 
ishing. But he cannot teach. He descended as instruc- 
tor from college to high school, to public school, to night 
school, but in every position he was a failure. There was 
no question concerning either the quantity or the quality of 
his book learning, but he did not know how to teach. This 
was the fatal defect that resulted in his professional death." 

The How to teach is so important that I can scarcely 
conceive of any teacher's not making it his most earnest 
study. Not only must there be pure water in the reser- 
voir, but the best possible distributing system. 

Fourth. The teacher needs training in the study of the 
child, in which study such great advances have been made 
within the past few years. 

What my friend, Dean Alford A. Butler, writes con- 
cerning the pastor is equally true of the teacher : " The 
pastor who knows books and not men, who understands 
inspired truth but not human nature, is like a man in the 
desert throwing precious water at a collection of bottles 
that are securely sealed. He may enjoy his own activity, 
but the bottles are as empty at the end of the performance 
as they were at the beginning. Talking is not teaching, 
and preaching is not edification, though the torrent be as 
large and as loud as Niagara." 2 " The deeper study of 

1 The Sunday School Outlook. The Crypt Conference. Address by 
Alford A. Butler, D.D., Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, Faribault, 
Minn. 



110 THE FKONT LINE 

child nature holds in it large promise of better work for 
the future." 1 Many a Sunday School teacher fails in 
governing, as well as in teaching his class, because he 
does not know his scholars. 

Jesus attracted men because He understood them, He 
knew them through and through, He felt their difficulties, 
He sympathized with their struggles. He saw them as 
worse than they saw themselves, yet He showed no loath- 
ing, no scorn ; He felt no hate, no contempt ; He did not 
despise them as outcasts. But He loved them. He knew 
the good in them, He showed them that they were not 
hopeless. For the first time they heard a teacher who 
saw the possibilities within them, and treated them accord- 
ing to what they were, and flung wide open the door of 
repentance and hope and heaven. 

Some wise thinker, whose name has escaped me, enforces 
the duty of child study in these earnest words : " There 
is a sense, a real and awful sense, in which you stand 
between God and the children, and must communicate 
Him to them. Every teacher is in the highest sense of 
the word a priest, for God reveals Himself through men 
and women. It is one of the ways He has chosen, and 
we, who are all His servants, must try and be equal to 
the responsibility. And if we stand between God and 
the children, our hope of efficiency lies in our sharing 
alike the soul of the Eternal and the spirit of the little 
child. This latter is more important than we think, and 
there is no good teacher who is not also a child. I do 
not say we must be childish. I say we must be children 
when we are face to face with the little ones, for only the 
child-heart can communicate with the child-heart. There- 
1 Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D., in Pastoral Leadership, p. 64. 



TEACHER TRAINING 111 

fore, amid all the pains that some of you are taking by the 
study of methods and systematic reading to fit yourselves for 
your task, do not forget the duty of a perpetual childhood." 

VI. In view of these facts and principles, and in appli- 
cation of them to the present situation, our next inquiry 
is, Who should be the teachers in the Sunday School ? 

Concerning Paid Teachers. — There is a tendency in some 
quarters to advocate the employment of paid teachers in 
the Sunday School, as being better Bible scholars, and 
better trained in the methods of teaching ; while of neces- 
sity the classes would be larger and the teachers fewer 
than in the ordinary Sunday School, it being claimed that 
it is more effective to have one large class under a trained 
teacher than several small classes under the ordinary 
teacher. 

That depends. 

In very large schools, especially those that are Mission 
Schools, a paid superintendent is often of great value. He 
becomes the pastor's assistant. He can do a great deal of 
work for the children during all the week, and become a 
power in the community. He needs to be as well educated 
as the pastor, but with special emphasis on this kind of 
work. Such paid assistants will doubtless increase in 
numbers, especially in cities, and they ought to. Smaller 
churches will very likely unite in employing such assist- 
ants. Where it is possible to have a business man, like 
Wanamaker at the Bethany Sunday School, in Philadelphia, 
or like Mr. Frank L. Brown, a man of wealth who gives his 
whole time to the Bushwick Avenue Methodist Episcopal 
Sunday School, Brooklyn, then this is the better way. 

In these large schools, the primary or kindergarten 
teacher, who requires a costly two-years' course of train- 



112 THE FRONT LINE 

ing, may well be paid, and then give her whole time to the 
younger children. 

Then there are special adult classes who wish to take up 
subjects which demand expert scholars; these may well 
employ for shorter or longer courses such scholars as may 
be obtained. 

But beyond this, for the great body of Sunday Schools, 
and for the great majority of classes in any Sunday School, 
the substitution of paid teachers, with large classes, instead 
of the present plan perfected, would be nothing less than 
a calamity to the Churches and the Sunday Schools. It 
would be like going back to Plato's ideal Republic, where 
the children were to be taken from their parents and 
placed under trained nurses and teachers, where, whatever 
else they gained, they lost the mother love and its heavenly 
power. 

Practically, this question is, for most schools, of little 
importance except as an ideal. For there are not enough 
of the talented, completely trained teachers to go round. 
And it would be impossible for most Churches to pay 
teachers in addition to their other expenses, at least suffi- 
ciently to attract real talent. It would be much better 
to make a liberal provision for training their own members 
to be good teachers. The Report of the United States 
Bureau of Education on Sunday Schools, 1896-1897, quotes 
the following : — 

" Hireling teachers can scarcely be expected to possess 
either the zeal or the ability of those who now engage in 
the -work from motives of pure benevolence. Gratuitous 
instruction was an astonishing improvement of the system." 
Only in some small degree is it wise, even if possible, to 
return to the earlier plan. 



TEACHER TRAINING 113 

Who then are the best available persons for our Sun- 
day School teachers ? 

1. It is evident that both men and women teachers are 
needed, with no great preponderance of either. 

2. The best men, the business men, the educated men, 
the men of character, the men of thought and action, in 
the Church. These help to give character to the Sunday 
School, as not an institution merely for the children and 
the uneducated, but one worthy of the best talent and 
best men. It is the presence of these men as teachers or 
scholars that furnishes the strongest attraction for keeping 
the young men in the Sunday School. The unofficial lay- 
men's example can do what the pastor himself, or any paid 
official, cannot do. It is a sad thing for any Church when 
its leading men ignore the Sunday School. 

3. The best women, the women of character, of gra- 
ciousness, of culture, of influence. Let me speak to them 
in the glowing words of Ruskin : " You have heard it 
said that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of 
some one who loves them. I know you would like that 
to be true ; you would think it a pleasant magic if you 
could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind 
look upon them: nay, more, if your look had the power 
not only to cheer but to guard them — if you could bid 
the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar 
spare — if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the 
drought, and say to the south wind, in frost, — ' Come, 
thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices 
of it may flow out.' This you would think a great thing ! 
And do you not think it a greater thing that all this (and 
how much more than this !) you can do, for fairer flowers 
than these, — flowers that could bless you for having 



114 THE FRONT LINE 

blessed them, and will love you for having loved them, — 
flowers that have eyes like yours, and thoughts like yours, 
— which once saved are saved forever ? Is this only a 
little power ? " 1 

4. Parents who have had experience with children 
know their nature, their faults, and their virtues, and 
know how to overcome their faults and cherish their vir- 
tues, who obey the Talmud's admonition that " children 
should be punished with one hand but caressed with two." 
Though they know as little of the theories of child-train- 
ing as the great poets knew of the theories of the poetic 
art, yet the best men and women in the world have grown 
up under their training. God, through nature, has taught 
us where to find the best teachers of children. 

In a note to Kant's Educational Theory, Professor Buch- 
ner says, "Modern pedagogy is coming more and more 
to ally the fundamental qualities of the real teacher to 
the characteristics of the maternal instincts, an extension 
of which should pass upward into the work of educa- 
tion." 

In like manner an English writer tells us that a large 
number in our Sunday Schools do not have what he 
calls " moral mothering." "We never see the true work 
of the Sunday School while we regard it as only teaching 
the Bible. It is teaching the Bible as the agency for the 
moral mothering of our scholars. What the young peo- 
ple in our Sunday School lack, as the equipment for a life 
of relationships and duties, we — teachers — are called 
upon to supply ; and for our work we shall have to de- 
velop systems and methods which will not follow the 
pattern of the day school, but the pattern of the Christian 
1 Sesame and Lilies. 



TEACHER TRAINING 115 

mother, of a Christian home. Our ideal is not the cul- 
tured day school teacher, but the skilful home-mother." 

5. Intelligent young people, bright, active, and earnest, 
who are striving to be better, struggling upward with 
many a failure and many a victory, are within easy mem- 
ory of their childhood's experience, in close sympathy 
with the young. These often are looked up to and 
admired by their juniors, and frequently have more in- 
fluence over the young, especially over boys, than their 
wiser and more learned elders. 

6. Christian day school teachers are very useful in the 
Sunday School. It is something like their usual work, 
and therefore more valuable in Sunday School. And it 
would be better for them to neglect some other service 
than the hour with the children, for which they have been 
specially trained, and through which they may have a 
good influence over other teachers. 

These are the best available material for the teaching 
force of the Sunday School. 

These people need a continual training in the material 
for teaching and the methods of teaching ; exactly what 
would be best for them as Christians, even if they were 
not teachers. 

There is nothing that so much aids the study of the 
Bible among Christians as the work of teaching in the 
Sunday School. It is the surest road to Christian cul- 
ture. It is the greatest educational force for the whole 
Church. 

This fact gives an additional reason for small classes, 
and many of them. It is best for the scholars to have 
classes only large enough to be enthusiastic and mutually 
helpful, not so large but the busy teacher can know them 



116 THE FRONT LINE 

all, visit them all. There are exceptions, but the whole 
tendency of Educational Science is in favor of smaller 
classes. Many a teacher is a success with six or eight 
scholars, who would be a failure with ten or twelve. It 
gives many definite Christian work to do. A large part 
of the training of adults comes from dealing with children. 
" I am sure that Victor Hugo was right when he said that 

God's — 

" * . . . speech is in their halting tongue 
And His forgiveness in their smile.' 

Look on your children as in part a revelation of God, and 
your very teaching work itself shall create something of 
its own spiritual energy, and hence provide you from 
itself with Divine momentum and spiritual dynamic." 

This training of the Church reacts on the home and on 
the Sunday School. No specially trained teachers from 
without can begin to have as much influence for good as 
a trained Church in the Sunday School. There is an 
immense amount of nonsense uttered about the scholars 
despising those teachers who are not as technically trained 
as their day school teachers. I cannot find that there is 
as much of that feeling in the Sunday School as in the 
day school and college. Of course there is apt to be a 
stage in the development of young people when, accord- 
ing to Professor Stalker, they agree with Carlyle in think- 
ing mankind mostly fools and those older persons who do 
not agree with them old fogies. But children do not 
usually despise those who love them, and have real char- 
acter, even if they have not every detail of knowledge at 
their tongue's end, any more than a freshman despises a 
college president because he may not be able to pass his 
own entrance examination. 



TEACHER TRAINING 117 

It is not very uncommon for teachers, when they have 
heard a convention lecture on the ideal teacher to be so 
discouraged at their distance from the ideal that they 
want to give up their classes, and the better teachers they 
are, the more modest they are apt to be about their own 
attainments. 

If the twelve apostles, "unlearned and ignorant men," 
should come incognito and apply to be teachers, they 
would be ruled out by many theorists, and yet by going 
to the School of Christ, and receiving the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit, they have transformed a large part of the 
world. Just such men and women are in our Sunday 
Schools to-day, and what they are to do is not to leave 
the school, not give up their teaching, but to do exactly 
what the apostles did, — go to school to Christ and open 
their souls to the Holy Spirit. 

The school is improved, not so much by exchanging 
poor teachers for better ones as by changing them into 
better teachers ; changing the hot-blooded Simon into 
Peter the rock, and the "son of thunder" into Saint John. 

It is helpful to know that almost all the good work in 
the world is done by imperfect men and imperfect instru- 
ments. Every hero has been vulnerable at some point ; 
every saint has failed in one direction at least. 

" There's a fleck of rust on a flawless blade — 
On the armor of price there's one ; 
There's a mole on the cheek of a lovely maid — 
There are spots upon the sun. 

" But the blade of Damascus has succored the weak, 
The shield saved a knight from a fall ; 
The mole is a grace on my lady's cheek — 
The sun, it shines for all." 



118 THE FRONT LINE 

The most entrancing vision of beauty I ever beheld was 
the view from the Eiffel Tower, looking down at night 
upon the enclosure of the Exposition buildings in Paris. 
The architecture of the buildings themselves was outlined 
in golden and silver light. The very trees bore fruit of 
electric lights. The groups of statuary were illuminated. 
The lawns were like immense emeralds surrounded by 
frames of golden light. The illuminated fountains, not 
from light thrown upon them as often seen at Saratoga 
and Niagara Falls, but from light underneath, threw up 
their waters in a glorious changing harmony of brilliant 
colors, like variegated fireworks. It was like a dream of 
Paradise, a vision of fairy-land. Then it came to me 
that all this beauty was made from the grass and water 
and light of our common, everyday life ; and that so 
God can take the materials now in our souls, and 
in society, and transform them into the glories of his 
new Jerusalem. 

The last thing for us to do is to be discouraged by high 
ideals. 

" If only we strive to be pure and true, 
To each of us there will come an hour 
When the tree of life shall burst into flower, 
And rain at our feet the glorious dower 
Of something grander than ever we knew." 

VII. The Church should provide the Means for Teacher 
Training. — First, there should be a Reference Library, 
always open to all at all times. It should contain not 
only books on the Bible, and on the lessons as they come, 
but books on the art of teaching, pedagogy, on child 
nature, and child training, as Carlyle says, " The true 
university of these days is a collection of books." 



TEACHER TRAILING 119 

Second. Courses of Study. — The Churches, as part of 
their regular expenses, should furnish courses of instruc- 
tion on the Bible, on pedagogy, and on child study, for 
the teachers, and equally for all the community. They 
will create a general interest, and furnish instruction 
which will be a benediction to the home, and thus react 
upon the Sunday School. 

In the Sunday School of which I am a member, we have 
tried various tentative ways of carrying out this plan. 
The speakers have been, as far as possible, experts in secu- 
lar education, who also have experience in Sunday Schools, 
teachers and head masters of large schools from our own 
and other cities, state agents of our educational system, 
supervisors of schools, professors in theological seminaries, 
and in normal schools, and some from our own church 
and school. These all have received payment with the 
invitation, except our own members. 

We have held the meetings on Sunday afternoons, on 
Sunday evenings, after the weekly prayer meeting, and in 
place of the weekly prayer meeting on alternate weeks, 
with special music. I very much incline to favor this 
latter plan, alternating the religious experience meetings 
with educational study of the Bible. It is very difficult 
in these times of many interests to make a success of such 
a course of study on a separate evening. 

These courses have all been free since the first one, 
when a class was formed. They have been advertised by 
programmes, and as far as possible there has been union 
with other churches. 

Third. Specimen Teaching. — There should be much 
more learning from others than has been common. It is 
often almost a revelation. Take pains to go into the classes 



120 THE FRONT LINE 

of the best teachers in your own and in other schools. 
In normal schools there are model schools, where the 
students, having learned principles and theories from 
other teachers, go to see these principles and theories put 
into practice. All efforts to form an idea of the Golden 
Candlestick from the descriptions were failures till a 
model of it was found on the Arch of Titus. 

Bishop Vincent, in his Modern Sunday School, has some 
admirable suggestions on this point. 

" One can do any piece of work the better for having 
first seen the same thing done by another. Young teachers 
of the Bible should enjoy frequent opportunities of this 
kind in their special work. We place such observation 
of actual teaching only second in practical value to the 
young teacher's practice under the eye and subject to the 
keen criticism of the accomplished instructor. The very 
best use of specimen teaching is that proposed some years 
ago by an efficient Sunday School superintendent, who, 
feeling the need of raising up a better class of young 
teachers, thus proposed to utilize the weekly services of 
his very best teachers : — 

" I propose to appoint in my school a corps of assistant 
teachers. These assistant teachers are to be selected from 
our oldest scholars, and are each to sit and recite with 
some one of the classes for two or three Sundays, and 
then with another class, and so on, until each assistant 
shall have had an opportunity of noting the methods of 
management and instruction adopted by a majority of the 
regular teachers. They are always to recite and take part 
in the lesson in the class with which they sit, so as not to 
embarrass the teacher. They are to take private notes, 
and compare for themselves the different methods of 



TEACHER TRAINING 121 

instruction, culling out the best features in each. With 
the practical information thus obtained, revised and 
strengthened by a further comparison with the systems 
reported in the published works upon the subject, these 
assistants will be prepared to enter upon their work with 
great advantages, and we shall never be at a loss to sup- 
ply a class with an efficient instructor, nor to provide a 
substitute for an absent teacher. 

" These assistants are to pledge themselves never, either 
publicly or privately, to make comparisons between the 
methods of the teachers whom they watch, but are to 
keep wholly and sacredly to themselves the result of their 
observations. They may, at the end of their probation, 
give a synoptical memorandum of the different modes 
noticed, and of the excellences and deficiencies observed, 
provided it is done in such a manner as not to connect 
the one or the other with any individual. These precau- 
tions seem necessary, in order to prevent the possibility of 
ill-feeling or embarrassment among the regular teachers 
from a criticism of their efforts." 

It seems wise to have, more frequently than of late, model 
classes in our Sunday School institutes and conventions. 

Fourth. Teachers' meetings impart knowledge, inspire 
interest, and awaken suggestions. (I knew well the head 
master of a city school, who said that the most he gained 
from a certain Saturday afternoon Bible class was that he 
taught on Sunday just the opposite ideas with a great deal 
of enthusiasm.) Teachers' meetings give real specimen 
lessons and show the other teachers not only what to teach, 
but how to teach. 

It is a great thing in any city to have a Union Teachers' 
Meeting taught by the best teacher within reach. 



122 THE FBONT LINE 

Each Sunday School should have a teachers' meeting 
of its own for various purposes. But there should be 
great variety in its methods. Unless there is some teacher 
who stands far above all others, it is better to have more 
than one teacher, not only because it is difficult to find 
any one person who can give the time to it, but also be- 
cause it gives more examples of teaching methods. 

An adaptation of this method shown me by Mr. Charles 
G. Trumbull of The Sunday School Times, in the Walnut 
Street Presbyterian Sunday School of Philadelphia, is 
remarkably ingenious, and equally successful. For the 
second quarter there were nine leaders, and thirteen 
" angles " or points of view, each of them under the 
charge of a separate person, as " approach," " Lesson 
story," " Orientalisms," " difficulties," " primary," each 
leader notifying in advance those of them who would be 
needed for his particular lesson. This meeting was held 
just before the weekly prayer meeting. 

Fifth. The Normal Class, the Teachers' Class. — The 
study of children under our care, the note-book like Emer- 
son's which he called his Savings Bank — all are helpful 
means of training ourselves to become good teachers. 

" It is the truth which has become a personal convic- 
tion, and is burning in a man's heart so that he cannot 
be silent, which is his message." 

" The number of such truths which a man has appropri- 
ated from the Bible and verified in his own experience is 
the measure of his power." J 

" The gold of thought has generally to be collected as 
gold dust." 

"It takes a bushel of charcoal to form one diamond." 
1 Rev. James Stalker in The Preacher and his Models. 



TEACHER TRAINING 123 

Sixth. Learning by Teaching. — " Aristotle long ago 
said that playing on the harp was learned by playing 
on the harp." All the lessons in grammar and the the- 
ories of poetry never made a good writer or a good poet, 
except as he consciously or unconsciously put them into 
practice. 

" The Church has an advantage here which few public 
schools possess. It is a community of men and women 
who are learning to live together. Its object is not 
merely to know, but to do, and to learn by doing. The 
laboratory method may be slowly and painfully intro- 
duced into our schools; it is the very life of our 
Churches." 1 

"Theory," says Professor Hamill, "is a good thing; 
practice is its coordinate — not a better thing, but another 
good thing. ... I believe in practice, but take care 
that you do not practise blunders, else you may become 
successful only as a blunderer. I have known teachers 
who persisted in practising with great diligence and 
patience, but in the end it was a blunder which had 
been the subject of practice. Be not discouraged if you 
make mistakes in your practice. I believe it was Carlyle 
who said, 4 Heaven was made for those who blundered on 
earth.' The man who blunders but turns his blunders 
into steps heavenward, is the man who succeeds. If you 
do not practise your blunders, but practise your own suc- 
cesses and the successes of other people, you will surely 
acquire the art. . . . 

"It needs to be impressed upon those who desire to 
teach yet are reluctant to assume the teacher's obligations, 
that the way is open, by practice, and through the helpful 
1 President Faunce at the R. E. A. meeting in Philadelphia. 



124 THE FRONT LINE 

experiences of other teachers, to certain efficiency in the 
art of Sunday School teaching." 1 

We learn not only how to teach, but the substance of 
the teaching, by teaching. Imparting knowledge is one 
of the greatest helps toward gaining knowledge. 

Why is a city richer than the same number of acres of 
pasture land ? It is because it is the centre into which 
all things flow, and are poured out again by every avenue 
of commerce. There is no other way for the soul to grow 
rich except by making it the highway through which knowl- 
edge and life and love come from God, and are sent on to 
help and bless others. 

" For the heart grows rich in giving : 
All its wealth is living grain. 
Seeds which mildew in the garner, 
Scattered, fill with gold the plain." 

In the words of Archbishop Trench : — 

" Dig channels for the streams of Love 
Where they may broadly run ; 
And Love has overflowing streams 
To fill them every one. 

" But if at any time thou cease 
Such channels to provide, 
The very springs of Love for thee 
Will soon be parched and dried. 

" For we must share, if we would keep, 
That good thing f rom above ; 
Ceasing to give, we cease to have, 
Such is the law of Love." 

May we all join the glorious company of the trained 
teachers. 

1 Professor Hamill in The Sunday School Teacher. 



VI 

A STUDY m GRADING 

The Necessity for Grading. — That the Sunday School 
should be graded not only "goes without saying," but it 
has been going with saying for many years. Child-study, 
pedagogy, psychology, common sense, present experience, 
and past experience all unite in demanding it, with no 
discordant voice. 

Grading is no late discovery. No new Columbus, sail- 
ing over unknown seas and steering by the compass of 
pedagogical principles, has suddenly discovered a hitherto 
unknown continent in the Sunday School world. No 
modern Kepler has worked out by scientific principles 
what ought to be, and, pointing his telescope to the Sun- 
day School heavens, has revealed a new planet there called 
Grading. Progress is seldom made in that way. 

What is New in Grading. 

1. A new emphasis is laid on Grading, urging its neces- 
sity, and creating a wider realization of its value, necessity, 
and possibility, and arousing a deeper interest in the 
movement. 

2. New methods of Grading are peopling and develop- 
ing the old continent, as America has been developed in 
the last century. It is removing the fogs and clearing 
the atmosphere so that the old stars shall shine with more 
enlightening radiance. 

125 



126 THE FRONT LINE 

3. A new opportunity is made possible by the progress 
of the past. 

4. There is a wider extension of its practice and an 
increasing number of experiments. 

5. There has been a new development of the sciences 
which enforce the necessity and guide by their principles. 

" The authority for such a plan is abundant," says Pro- 
fessor E. P. St. John. " The Sunday School is the edu- 
cational department of the Church, and every educator 
stands as a champion of gradation. Every study of child- 
hood indicates its value. Every systematic and progressive 
course of Bible study requires it. The laws of teaching 
make it essential, and the methods of teaching are adapted 
to it." 

Here, as in other departments, there is an imperative 
need that the Sunday Schools all over the land should see 
the Front Line and come up to it and march on with it ; 
for the Front Line itself is hourly moving forward. All 
the Sunday School leaders desire a better grading than 
exists in most schools. They "are stretching forward 
to the things which are before." They are pressing "on 
toward the goal." 

" He who says ' I want no more,' 
Confesses he has none." 

Dean Swift, in a reform address, illustrated his point 
by the story of one of his neighbors who, by his industry 
and skill, was becoming rich. It happened that during 
the process he had been " troubled by violent stomachic 
pains, for which he had found no relief and which were 
the bane and torment of his life." 

"Now," continues the Dean, "if my excellent laborer 



A STUDY IN GRADING 127 

were to send for a physician and to consult him respect- 
ing this malady, would it not be very singular language 
if our doctor were to say to him : i My good friend, you 
surely will not be so rash as to attempt to get rid of these 
pains in your stomach ! Have you not grown rich with 
these pains in your stomach? Have you not risen under 
them from poverty to prosperity? Has not your situa- 
tion, since you were first attacked, been improving every 
year? You surely will not be so foolish and indiscreet as 
to part with the pains in your stomach ! ' 

" What would be the answer of the rustic to this non- 
sensical monition? ' Monster of rhubarb ! ' he would say, 
' I am not rich in consequence of the pains in my stomach, 
but in spite of the pains in my stomach ; and I should be 
ten times richer and fifty times happier if I had never 
had any pains in my stomach at all.' " 

Sunday Schools have prospered with the evil of very 
imperfect grading. They have done a vast amount of 
good. They have educated and sent forth a multitude of 
noble men and women. But, like Dean Swift's parish- 
ioner, they have reached this degree of prosperity and 
noble fruitage, not on account of bad grading, but in 
spite of it. For there is no question that a wise grading 
makes the teaching easier, the instruction more efficient, 
and the results more fruitful. 

Grading is the systematic adaptation of the school, 
including, — 

the lessons taught, 

the classification of the pupils, 

the fitness of the teachers, 

the methods of teaching, 

the equipment required, 



128 THE FRONT LINE 

to the age, the intelligence, the different stages of growth 
and development of the various members of the school. 

" It is really an attempt to do God's work in God's way, 
to do the right thing in the right way for every pupil in 
the school." 1 

All the above five parts of the school must join in 
harmony, if we would have the best work. " Graded 
teachers will not atone for ungraded courses of study. 
Graded teachers and graded courses will not atone for 
ungraded pupils. And graded teachers and graded pupils 
combined cannot atone for the lack of properly graded 
courses of study." 2 

I. The graded course of lessons must be graded both in 
Material and in Treatment. 

II. The pupils are to be graded by putting them into 
classes or groups of classes of the same general age and 
acquirements, especially those accustomed to be together 
in day school classes. 

In very large schools there are many advantages in 
having a separate room for each department, with its own 
opening exercises and methods. In every school the 
Primary department should have a separate room when- 
ever possible, because everything connected with its man- 
agement differs from those in the other grades far more 
than the other grades differ from one another. 

In smaller schools it is much better to have the whole 
school (except the primary and an occasional special class 
of adults, who need all the hour for the lesson) meet 
together for the devotional exercises, reports, and neces- 

1 Professor E. P. St. John, Superintendent of the N. Y. State S. S. 
Association. 

2 S. B. Haslett, Ph.D., in The Pedagogical Bible School. 



A STUDY IN GRADING 129 

sary business, and then retire to class rooms, if such rooms 
can be obtained. In small schools it is often better to 
have even the primary class meet for a part of this time 
with the rest of the school, and give some of the songs or 
responses. 

Many a school loses interest and power and enthusiasm 
because of too great a separation of departments. I have 
known schools where the Intermediate and lower depart- 
ments were intensely interesting, but the Senior depart- 
ment dull and lifeless and unattractive, because of its 
entire separation from the children ; and the seniors com- 
plain of this state of things. It is unwise to exploit a 
part of the school at the expense of the others, for this 
injures all departments ; it prevents the older scholars 
from remaining in the school. 

The fact is, that all things in the school — courses of 
study, classification, methods — are compelled to be modi- 
fied from the pure individual ideal, in order to work 
well together. You cannot have even the best poetry 
or the best music in the world without modifying its 
various elements from what would be ideal for each 
separate element. In music, for instance, no organ or 
piano can be perfectly tuned in each octave without mak- 
ing horrible discords when different octaves are played 
together. 

Many of the criticisms of the Sunday School are unfair, 
and many idealists' plans and experiments fail from ignor- 
ing this fact. 

Rev. E. Morris Fergusson, of Trenton, New Jersey, one 
of the most wide-awake, talented, and progressive of state 
Sunday School secretaries, wisely says : " The social and 
spiritual benefits of gradation are of more importance than 



130 THE FRONT LINE 

the strictly educational benefits. The advantage to the 
primary child of being in a well-organized Primary De- 
partment comes partly from the good lessons taught by 
the primary teacher, but much more from the fact that 
the child is a member of a department that is run for the 
benefit of children from six to eight years of age. The 
teaching is much ; but the life, the social atmosphere, the 
spiritual stimulus and opportunity, the chance to live out 
the child's whole natural life during the primary period, 
— these are far more. Establish a Junior Department for 
the children from nine to twelve, and give it the best 
makeshift you can find for a separate room, and you begin 
to create the same kind of a helpful atmosphere for the 
juniors to grow in, before you have touched the lessons at 
all. So with the big intermediate boys and girls ; so with 
the young ladies and gentlemen of the Senior Department ; 
so with all." 

III. The grading of teachers means the finding or train- 
ing of teachers who are peculiarly adapted to certain 
stages of the child's development, and keeping them in 
the same department from year to year, while the pupils 
they teach pass from grade to grade, changing teachers as 
they advance. 

Mr. Fergusson continues : " Teachers who belong to the 
grade, and who are willing to devote their Sunday School 
lives, for Christ's sake, to the study of the problem of 
teaching boys and girls of junior or intermediate or senior 
age, these are what our Sunday Schools need more than 
separate rooms or graded lessons. . . . But first we need, 
for each grade, a permanent force of teachers. " 

This grading of teachers, though in actual use for many 
years in the Primary Department, needs such a widening 



A STUDY IN GRADING 131 

of scope as Mr. Fergusson suggests. But the grading of 
teaching should be by departments, and not by annual 
courses or by a particular kind of lessons, as the Old 
Testament, or the Gospel story, because a continued dwell- 
ing in one portion of the Bible alone is narrowing, and 
needs the broadening effect of wider study and wider 
teaching. Leading educators are condemning the method 
of keeping teachers too long in any one small grade in 
the day schools, but advocating the retaining of them in 
the larger departments. 

To quote from Dr. Charles Roads, in a manual issued 
by the Pennsylvania State Sabbath School Association : 
" Experts with each period are required, and to produce 
these experts the teacher must be joined to the depart- 
ment rather than to one class for a long term of years. 
A teacher takes a class for four or five years through a 
department, then remains to carry another class through 
it, while the students receive the benefit of another expert 
teacher in the next grade. The peril of having only one 
teacher in a child's whole Sunday School life, and he or 
she with one-sided character or unhelpful spirit, is very 
great. All of us are imperfect, and the best character 
development comes from three or four good teachers influ- 
encing successively; and when each teacher becomes an 
expert in a department the power of the influence exerted 
is multiplied. We actually can report that the personal 
ties become stronger, the personal influence more power- 
ful, and no complete breaking of old ties is necessary 
when promotion occurs. The former teacher continues 
helpful." 

For the intermediate and senior grades a very large 
proportion of teachers can adapt themselves to any of the 



132 THE FRONT LINE 

grades at will, with some special study and good common 
sense. 

But in every place we find those who have peculiar 
gifts, sometimes undeveloped till put into use. One has 
a great gift in teaching boys ; give him boys to teach, 
and put no limit to the numbers except the limit of his 
ability. Some can teach boys or girls of college age with 
great acceptance and power. For special adult classes 
there are required experts in different directions. For 
many of them different teachers are required for the same 
class at different times. In all cases use graded teachers 
whenever they can be found. 

But do not let your good teachers be discouraged be- 
cause they feel that they have no special talent. In the 
day school the average intelligent person is trained for 
almost any position in the schools. The same is true of 
Sunday School teachers. 

Schemes of Grading 

The simplest, most natural, and abiding scheme, adapted 
in a way to all schools, is that of Three Great Depart- 
ments, each of which may be subdivided into courses or 
grades, according to circumstances. 

Cradle Roll. — Not meeting with the school, but belonging to it. 
1. Primary. Eight or nine years of age and 

under; same as Primary in 
day schools. 

Departments ] 2. Intermediate or Equivalent to Grammar Schools. 
general school. 
1^3. Senior. Equivalent to High School 

grade and upward. 
Home Department. — Not meeting with the school, but members 
of it. 



A STUDY IN GRADING 133 

Note that in a broad way these correspond to the larger, 
distinctive divisions of the day schools, — Primary, Gram- 
mar, and High. 

They make a distinction between the grades and de- 
partments. 

All kinds of Sunday Schools have something of these 
grades, "whether or not blind eyes perceive them." I 
have never seen an entirely ungraded school. Even the 
poorest are not fairly compared with the old ungraded 
day schools, where one teacher taught all grades and all 
kinds of lessons. Yet there needs to be a more clear dis- 
tinction and a better use of these grades to make a school 
fully graded. But the method of promotion is not a test 
as to the fact of gradation. 

It is between these departments that there should be 
some definite mark of promotion. The scholars should be 
made to perceive that in going up from one to another, 
an advance is made to a distinctly higher position, like 
the change from the Grammar School to the High 
School. 

This is a distinction of no small importance if we would 
keep the young men and women in the Sunday School. 
Professor Irving F. Wood of Smith College made a 
strong point of this in a late address. He says truly that 
we must do one of two things if we would keep the young 
men in the Sunday School, and thus preserve the spiritual 
results of the long years that have gone before. 

One method is for the parents and grandparents to 
attend the school, in which case there is no special danger 
of the children's feeling that they have outgrown it. 

The other method is "to give the upper grades the 
relative dignity which the High School has in the public 



134 THE FRONT LINE 

school system," and we might add, to give wherever possible 
something of the college grade to selected classes. Pro- 
fessor Wood enforces this principle from his own experi- 
ence. "I confess that it is usually painful to attend a 
service on Children's Sunday, because, when the children 
march in, one so pities the big boys who end the long line. 
They cannot be called children by any figure of speech, 
and yet their loyalty to the Sunday School drives them to 
this position. I take off my hat to their heroism. At the 
same time I recall an overgrown lad who refused, on a like 
occasion, to march or sit with his class, and fled to a safe 
retreat in the gallery. My recollection is without either 
shame or penitence. I stand ready at any time to aid and 
abet a rebellion of that sort. No one has a right, at the 
very time when we want to make the strongest spiritual 
impression, to submit the pride of growing youth to such 
humiliation. Our general system of classification will get 
rid of that by and by." 

Margaret Meredith adds this testimony : " It is felt that 
grown persons are very hard to induce to attend Sunday 
School. I cannot believe that, for the only school in which 
I ever saw the same steady effort made to invite them 
which is made for children was entirely successful. . . . 

" Grown people, both men and women, can only be drawn 
into Sunday School if the ideas of childishness and igno- 
rance be carefully disassociated with their attendance 
there ; to this end one easy and efficient measure is scru- 
pulously to call all your adult classes 'Bible Classes.' 
Also, in providing lesson helps for them, provide Bible 
class helps if such are given to any scholars." 

This distinct advance is usually made in transferring 
scholars from the Primary department to what is usually 



A STUDY IN GRADING 



135 



the main school. Let the same be done now for those 
who go up to the High School grade. 

An advance on this scheme which the majority of schools 
can adopt consists of the following grades, the names of 
which were agreed upon unanimously by the Editors' 
Association last June, in the following order, — 

1. Primary, 3. Intermediate, 

2. Junior, 4. Senior, 

5. Advanced. 

the Cradle Roll and Home Department being understood. 
The three large departments are the basis of a more com- 
plete grading : — 



Departments 


Grades 


Psychological Divi- 
sion: Average Ages 




f 


Cradle Roll. 






I. Primary 


jl. 


Kindergarten. 




3 to 6 years ; those 
unable to read. 


IL Intermediate or 
main school. 


12. 


Primary. 

Junior. 

Intermediate. 




6 to 8 or 9 years. 

9 to 11 years. 

11 or 12 to 15 or 16. 


III. Senior, or ad- 
vanced, or 
Bible classes 


\i 

"7. 

8. 


Young people. 
Adults or Advanced. 
Special elective classes. 
Normal and teacher-train- 


15 years and up- 
wards. 






ing classes. 






Home Department. 











There are schools which are experimenting with schemes 
of grading with a different grade for each year, but in the 
schools with which I am acquainted the experiment has 
not been going on long enough to test its value. 



136 the front line 

Observations 

1. These grades must be very flexible. In the best day- 
schools there is a strong tendency to modify strict grading. 
Professor Search in his Ideal School contends that years 
are lost in the common graded school by the brighter 
scholars being kept down to the average. " There is no 
objection to classification, provided it is of flexible charac- 
ter. Certainly there is some advantage in gathering into 
working sections pupils of kindred interest, and, to a cer- 
tain extent, of the same general working strength. What 
is contended against is the assumption that the graded 
organization as operated almost universally in the public 
schools meets the requirements of the needs of individual 
schools. . . . The graded school does not grade." 

A professor in a great University tells me, at the time 
of this writing, that the danger of the Sunday School is 
the adoption of day school systems which are being dis- 
counted already by the best day schools, and especially of 
the attempt to 

2. Grade the Sunday School by the Grammar School 
grades of the same scholars, which is pedagogically wrong, 
except in the general way referred to above. The subjects 
of study are too different to apply the same grading to 
both Sunday and day schools. One scholar may be 
advanced in historical, or thoughtful subjects, several 
degrees beyond the arithmetic or geography by which he 
is graded in the grammar school. There are many other 
things which should be used in making tests for the grades 
to which a Sunday School scholar should belong. 

3. The tests of grading must also, of necessity, be very 
flexible. I know of no Sunday Schools, even those which 



A STUDY IN GRADING 137 

pride themselves on the completeness of the grading, 
where the test of advancement to a higher grade is purely 
the scholar's knowledge of the regular lessons of the pre- 
vious year. Mere age is not a scientific test, but it must 
be one of the considerations, or some of those who most 
need the Sunday School will be driven away, with no 
advantage to scholar or school, but only to an imperfect 
theory. 

In quite a number of schools, using different courses of 
lessons, the grading is in accordance with certain supple- 
mental lessons. This is good for the advancement from 
the Primary to the Intermediate, because such lessons 
form part of the regular course there ; but beyond that 
the supplemental lesson test is unpedagogical except as 
one means of ascertaining the scholars' fitness for higher 
grade material and methods. 

The scholar's general fitness for a grade is the real test, 
however that fitness is ascertained, modified by the value 
to him of various kinds of knowledge taught only in cer- 
tain grades, or of finishing a course he has begun. 

There is no little incentive to good work arising from 
the privilege of advancement whenever prepared for it. 
Since the younger Sunday School scholars are also in the 
day schools, there must be the same variations of prog- 
ress in both ; and Professor Search gives tabulated experi- 
ments, in which, in a course of Latin, the scholars' progress 
varied in the proportion of 40 for the lowest to 140 for 
the highest, and in arithmetic from 140 for the lowest to 
479 for the highest, i.e. in each study the highest was 
about 3i times beyond the lowest. 

It is plain that throughout the school there must be 
great flexibility in grading and grading tests, or the 



138 THE FJRONT LINE 

history of the school will be but a parallel to Hawthorne's 
short story of The Birth-Mark, where the professor had a 
wife of exquisite beauty, the only imperfection in which 
was a birth-mark on her cheek. By means of chemicals 
and various experiments he had succeeded in gradually 
reducing the marring color and the size of the spot ; but 
when the last experiment had succeeded, the disfigure- 
ment had vanished and he had a perfect wife, but she was 
dead. 

4. Another reason for this flexibility lies in the fact 
that the scholars in every school are changing, some fall- 
ing out and others entering; and part of the mission of 
every Sunday School is to reach out a helping hand and a 
cordial welcome to those who are neglected. 

5. This flexibility does not mean that grading is to be 
neglected. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to 
every good Sunday School. 

But the improvement of the grading or the introducing 
of a good graded system into any school is a difficult 
matter for most pastors and superintendents, and is usu- 
ally dreaded by them. I commit them to the wise and 
helpful words of that prince among Sunday School work- 
ers, Rev. Dr. A. F. Schauffler of New York, in his Ways 
of Working. Whosoever will follow his advice and enter 
in earnest upon the attempt, though he will be discouraged 
at times, will find at last that, " like Alice in the Looking- 
Glass Country, when he thinks that he has at last got 
out of sight of the house, he is just walking in at the 
front door." 

6. It has been well said that "in secular schools the 
lowest and the highest, the Kindergarten and the Uni- 
versity, are best equipped, and the middle ranges need 



A STUDY IK GRADING 139 

reform. Here only the lowest has yet received adequate 
attention." The early child-life has received the most at- 
tention from psychologists. The adult grades have always 
been studied, and the grading of the lesson for them is 
easier than for the lower grades. Very much is being done 
for Bible classes, normal classes, men's elective classes; 
and more remains to be done in the development of 
this higher grade. But in the Sunday School, as in 
the day school, the middle ranges now need the largest 
attention. 

I would adopt the words of the preface of Professors 
Burton and Mathews' Principles and Ideals, " We ven- 
ture to hope that what we have written will be of value 
for teachers of those classes whose pupils constitute what 
is perhaps the greatest problem of the Sunday School, the 
boys and girls of grammar-school and high-school age." 

Courses of Study. — Before the International system was 
introduced in 1872, the Sunday School courses were in a 
very chaotic condition. A great deal of good work was 
done. Individual systems were some of them very good. 
But I found it almost impossible to take the Sunday 
Schools, very much of the time, out of the Gospels. Once 
or twice my schools began on Genesis, but refused to con- 
tinue through the year. There was almost nothing in 
this country for real help for scholar or teacher. The 
English Sunday Schools were in advance of ours in that 
respect. 

That the International system met a great need was 
shown by its sudden spreading like wildfire over the 
entire country. I remember it well because just at that 
time, while an active pastor, feeling deeply the need of a 
change, I prepared a semi-graded course on the Gospel in 



140 THE FRONT LINE 

the Old Testament. Early in the first year of the actual 
use of the International system, I presented my manu- 
script to the publishers, and they all refused even to look 
at it, because, as they said, nothing was selling except the 
International helps. 

That system created a new era in the Sunday School 
world. It is hard for one to realize the greatness of the 
change, who has not worked under the older plan ; and as 
a burnt child dreads the fire, so such a one dreads the 
modern tendency toward a similar chaos. 

The International system has been under the fire of 
criticism from the beginning. Most of the earlier criti- 
cisms have passed away, partly because of their nature, 
and partly because they had accomplished their mission of 
improving the system. None of them were embodied, to 
any extent, in working forms. 

Within a few years a new series of criticisms has arisen, 
partly from the success of the prevailing system in uplift- 
ing the whole Sunday School movement, so that its very 
atmosphere has changed as from April to June; and 
partly because of the marvellous development of the 
sciences on which both Bible study and the art of teaching 
depend. The whole educational world has received new 
light from both science and experience. 

These criticisms have taken form in new courses of 
study of various kinds, some of them still in the theoretical 
stage, and some tested by actual use. 

The Bible Study Union Graded Lesson system, the 
earliest and the most widely extended of all these systems, 
was conceived and has been built up by my neighbor and 
friend Rev. Erastus Blakeslee. By his teaching genius, 
his intense energy, and the organizing skill through which 



A STUDY IN GRADING 141 

he won his spurs in the army and the military title of 
General, he organized success for his new scheme, which 
is now so well known. 

The Lutheran General Council have issued an interest- 
ing series of graded lessons in the form of bound books, 
one for each grade (published also in quarterly form), — 
Pictureland, Workland, Bible Story, Bible History, Bible 
Greography, Bible Biography, Bible Teachings, and Bible 
Literature. " The General Council Graded System for 
Sunday and Church schools covers all ages of Biblical in- 
struction in simple and definite stages from the Kinder- 
garten to the College, from the Infant school to the Bible 
class, with full text-books and apparatus, each a complete 
unit in itself." 

"The Young Churchman Co., Milwaukee, publishes a 
series of a dozen or more graded courses which are com- 
ing into general use in Episcopal schools." 

Beyond these I know of no complete series of graded 
lessons (aside from the International) that have been 
tested in any large number of schools; and these have 
been subjected to severe criticism, in proportion to the 
time they have been used. It makes a great difference 
whether a system is in the theoretical stage or in the 
working stage. " It is a useful experience to change from 
the position of the criticiser to that of the criticised." 

Besides these a considerable number of Sunday Schools 
are making their own courses. " The lesson woods are 
full of new sprouts of this kind, some of which may yet, 
by careful and assiduous cultivation, branch out in great 
breadth and power." — Dr. Blackall. 

Quite a large number of theoretical courses have been 
prepared and published. 



142 THE FRONT LINE 

And lastly there are partial courses, chiefly for the 
Primary or adult departments. 

The Chicago University Press is preparing a graded 
course of Constructive Bible Studies, of which some of the 
books for the Academy and College and Universities are 
published, and also a very interesting volume for the Ele- 
mentary grades by Miss Georgia Louise Chamberlin, who 
has a very successful children's department in the Hyde 
Park Baptist Sunday School of which President Harper 
is superintendent. 

The International Committee of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association has three courses ; the United Society of 
Christian Endeavor has a course ; Christian Nurture, New 
Haven, Connecticut, has four courses ; The Rainbow Pub- 
lishing Co., Manchester, New Hampshire, has six courses; 
Bible Studies, Elyria, Ohio, has three or four courses. 

The American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago, 
and the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, each have a 
number of correspondence courses for non-residents. 

The Good in these Systems. — 1. They have great virtues 
in themselves. They mark a real and strong movement 
of progress toward better Sunday School work. 

2. They do a still greater good in pioneering improve- 
ments in the International Lesson System, used by nearly 
thirteen millions of people in this country and about half 
as many more in other lands. 

During the late war in South Africa the eight-year-old 
grandson of Hon. John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State, 
wrote a little book on the Boer War, the sale of which 
added several hundred dollars to the relief fund. One of 
the brightest things in this bright book is the story of 
some soldiers practising gunnery, and using for their mark 



A STUDY IN GRADING 143 

a flock of ten goats in a distant field. When they had 
fired twenty shots they went to see the results of their 
marksmanship, and found that there were eleven goats 
instead of ten ; one had been born during the firing. 

A similar result has followed the practice firing of criti- 
cism, both by speech and by example, upon the International 
Lesson System. It has more virtues than it had before. 

As in the day school about 95 per cent of new edu- 
cational experiments fail to establish themselves, 1 so 
a certain number, but much smaller, of these Sunday 
School experiments will prove fruitless. But the large 
valuable remainder will do a considerable part of its work 
in improving the system now in largest use, and the best 
in them will be absorbed in it. 

In official document No. 2, containing the programme 
of the first Religious Association convention, is this state- 
ment : " The Sunday School situation is at present this : 
The mass of the schools are moving along on the lines 
which the International Association has developed, and 
are not ready to conform themselves at once to a higher 
ideal of substance and method in religious and moral 
instruction ; while, on the other hand, about 25 per 
cent of the Sunday Schools of the country are seeking 
to adjust their work to this higher ideal by securing a 
better substance of instruction in accord with modern 
knowledge, and by using lessons constructed on modern 
educational principles." This has frequently been re- 
peated. 

I protest against that line of cleavage in the Sunday 
Schools as not in accordance with fact. It is impossible 

1 United States Commissioner W. T. Harris, in Search's Ideal School. 
See also Chap. I of this volume. 



144 THE FRONT LINE 

for me to know what percentage of the schools are or are 
not seeking a higher ideal of religions and moral instruc- 
tion. But so far as my acquaintance extends, and so far 
as I can read the signs of the times, the great majority, 
especially of the leaders, are not "unready to conform 
themselves to a higher ideal," but are continually seeking 
the higher ideal of instruction in accordance with modern 
knowledge and modern educational principles. 

The real line of cleavage is between those who believe 
the highest ideals can best be attained by the present 
modified International Lessons, and those who believe that 
they can be attained only by a different system of graded 
lessons. 

The defect of these new systems is that they lay too 
large a proportion of emphasis on some of the needs of 
the Sunday School, and neglect some others that are 
necessary for its best results. It is like the present ten- 
dency of florists to develop the most exquisite beauty in 
roses at the expense of the old-time fragrance. Illustra- 
tions of this tendency are found in life, in business, in 
school and college curricula, in reforms of every kind. 

The Front Line System, the ideal that is largely becom- 
ing real, combines the good in both. There is as real 
scientific pedagogy in the prevailing system as in the new 
one. And any new system that cannot say 

" All the good the Old Time had 
Remains to make the New Time glad." 

cannot have general success, and does not deserve to 
have it. 

Criticisms of the International System. — For many years 
I have kept a file of the criticisms on the International 



A STUDY IN GRADING 145 

Lessons, as well as on Bible study in general, in order to 
see the subject from every point of view, and to discover 
the needs and the directions of real improvement. 

Here are some specimens. "This plan of study has 
been deliberately stigmatized — stigmatized by prominent 
religious editors and by eminent clergymen and laymen 
— as 'scrappy,' as 'hash,' as a 'hop, skip, and jump series,' 
as a 'sparrow plan,' 'a grasshopper plan,' 'a kangaroo 
plan.'" 

" The International Lesson System, consisting of seven 
or eight verses selected disconnectedly here and there in 
the Bible." 

" The pestiferous practice in the Sunday School series 
of jumping all about from Galilee to Gibeon." 

" Disconnected hodge-podge of facts and principles un- 
worthy the name of Biblical learning." "Not orderly or 
connected in such a way as to afford a comprehensive and 
intelligible view of the Bible." 

" Out of harmony with the principles of modern educa- 
tion." 

It "pays little or no regard to fundamental and well- 
known pedagogical principles applied in all modern public 
instruction." 

"Beginning anywhere and ending nowhere." 

"The system is ungraded." "The distinctions of age 
and capacity in the scholars are not recognized in the 
present system. The same lesson is intended for infant, 
youth, and adult. This does violence to the law of natural 
progress and development." 

One of its " most fatal defects ... is the fact that it is 
framed, prepared, worked out, built up from the adult 
point of view almost entirely, if not entirely " 



146 THE FRONT LINE 

It " tends to limit the pupil's knowledge of the Bible by 
inviting a dependence upon the helps that accompany the 
lessons, and causing a neglect of Bible study." 

" There are too many helps," and they are too good, for 
"not a single line is left uncovered (except, as another 
remarks, the difficult points which are passed by on the 
other side, as the man on the Jericho road by the Levite), 
nothing remains for individual research and study. It is 
simply a cramming process that dwarfs the mind and 
destroys the power of mental application." 

By this system the Bible " has now been travelled over 
again, and again and again, through thirty years, until no 
nook or corner has been left unexplored." 

" The old system is, in general, homiletic, and the new, 
educational. This does not mean that the one is exclu- 
sively homiletic and the other exclusively educational, 
for both are to a greater or less extent homiletic, and 
both are more or less educational. What it does mean 
is, that the one depends chiefly on homiletic methods 
to accomplish its purpose, and the other on educational 
methods." 

" It has been used chiefly for devotional and hortatory 
purposes." 

" Under such a system, progress in education is impos- 
sible — indeed, it is hardly too much to say that it is not 
even sought." The pupil after ten years of this system 
" knows very little about the Bible ; its history and chro- 
nology, and the spiritual development of the people whose 
history it narrates, have not been, could not have been 
under the system, made intelligible." 

" We are all feeling how antiquated, uninteresting, and 
ineffective present Sunday School instruction is." 



A STUDY IN GRADING 147 

We stand in the presence of this word-picture by a com- 
posite artist of high degree and dignity, supposed to know, 
and wonder where, in the present time, we can find the 
original. He must have been dead these many years. 

I have taken my Diogenes lantern and have found im- 
perfect systems and growing systems, but no system to 
which the above description belongs. 

One morning years ago at Chautauqua, I heard an aged 
and learned Methodist minister, " who had a brilliant 
future behind him," discourse on Calvin and Calvinism. 
It was a fearful picture. The next morning Dr. Hodge 
of Princeton, who spells Calvinism with a very large C, 
began his lecture by saying, " If what the speaker yester- 
day described as Calvinism is Calvinism, then I am not 
a Calvinist." So I am inclined to say that if what has 
been repeated many times of late as a characterization of 
the International Lesson system is a true picture, then I 
have not been teaching the International Lessons these 
past years. 

I never hear such statements about the International 
Lessons without recalling a story I once heard. A gen- 
tleman had the cheerful custom of saying about whatever 
happened to him, "It might have been worse." He lost 
his property ; " It might have been worse." He was sick, 
he lost friends, he was disappointed in business, and always, 
"It might have been worse." 

At length a friend thought he would make up a case 
where this favorite saying would be impossible. "I 
dreamed last night," he said, "that you and I and our 
entire families were out in a yacht when a cyclone struck 
us, and every one of us were drowned and went to eternal 
ruin." 



148 THE FRONT LINE 

Still the response was, " It might have been worse." 

" Worse ! really worse ! ! " 

" Yes. It might have been true." 

The International Lesson System. — It is necessary first 
to possess a clear idea of what the International Lesson 
System is to-day; not as it was once, not as a mere 
theory, but as it is actually doing its work in the best 
present day Sunday Schools. 

No brief sentence can set it out fully, without certain 
explanations such as are given below. For instance, the 
word " uniform " has misled many because they have ap- 
plied it to the lessons taught, and not to the Scripture 
selections where it belonged. 

The International Lesson System is a system of uniform 
central selections of Scripture for the whole school, with 
optional or elective lessons at both ends. 

It may be represented thus : — 

Uniform central selections for the whole school. 



Optional Primary Lessons. Elective courses for special 

adult classes. 

The phrase central selections is used because for many 
years the International Committee have plainly designated 
as part of each lesson a longer section of the Bible than the 
verses selected for printing and for more detailed study. 

The Optional Lessons for the younger scholars at the 
beginning of the course have been endorsed and selected 
by the Committee for several years ; but have been in use 
much longer by many schools, and have been practically 
a part of the system for a long time. 

But wise parents, with children of different ages in the 



A STUDY IN GRADING 149 

Sunday School, have frequently felt that the disadvantages 
of some lessons less adapted to the youngest children were 
a far less evil than the separation of the younger members 
from the family Bible study, and its educational atmosphere. 

The elective courses at the adult end of the system have 
long been in use in connection with the International 
Lessons. The Editors' Association and the International 
Lesson Committee are unanimously in favor of them. 
The Committee were unanimous several years ago, so 
were most of the editors. It is not wise to explain here 
why the Editors' Association at Clifton in 1903 did not 
vote on the question, and so were represented to the pub- 
lic as opposed. But that a great majority of them were 
then in favor of it is shown by the fact that at the next 
meeting at Richmond there was not a dissenting voice. 
Toronto in 1905 will interpret Denver, with a different 
result from the interpretation of its action by many at the 
time of its meeting. 

Several denominations, believing in the International 
Lesson System, have also published elective courses for 
adult classes. 

I have no question that it is better every way for the 
majority of adults to use the regular lessons of the rest of 
the school. Yet there is a continual need and call for 
special classes for the study of the Bible in other ways, 
and to take up practical religious questions. Some make 
a study of individual books of the Bible, of the historic 
method, doctrines of the church, Christian ethics, church 
history in the light of the Bible. In most of our large 
schools such classes are formed. It is said that 49 per 
cent of the pastor's classes among the Congregationalists 
take some such courses. 



150 THE FRONT LINE 

These classes are so various, their needs and desires are 
so manifold, that it may be wise to let the private experi- 
mentation go on a little longer, though there is no body 
of men in the country better fitted to prepare such courses 
than the select company of choice Sunday School men 
who compose the International Lesson Committee. 

This plan of elective courses for adults leaves the com- 
mittee free to confine themselves to the general movement 
of Bible history which is adapted to all ages above the 
early primary, and to the great majority of the busy men 
and women of our committees in city or in country. 

The International Lessons are graded in material as well 
as in treatment. 

The most urgent educational indictment of this system 
is what is called its failure to grade the material of the 
lessons to the different stages of the child's development. 

The phrase " uniform selections " has been confounded 
with "uniform material." 

That different material is found in the same passage is 
plain from the selections made in systems claimed to be 
peculiarly pedagogical. All but one of the professors of 
pedagogy I have met say that different material is found 
in the same passages. 

The wider sections connected with the special selections 
(as arranged by the committee) enable us to find different 
material for different ages in the same section of Bible 
history. For instance, when we had printed a few verses 
from Amos, those who studied only those verses had reason 
to complain of their difficulty in teaching, but those who 
took the book of Amos, as was designed, found a story that 
would fire the enthusiasm of any junior boy. 

In my mountain home not long ago I met four men from 



A STUDY IN GRADING 151 

the forestry department of the government, and each one 
found entirely different material in the same forest. One 
learned who owned each parcel, and went his way ; another 
learned the various kinds of wood that made up the forest ; 
another measured the trees and found the commercial value 
of the forest; and the fourth studied the botany of the forest. 
When there is a comparison made with day school grad- 
ing there is usually the error of not distinguishing between 
the different kinds of study in the different kinds of school. 
We are asked, " What would be said of the argument that, 
because it is possible to teach something about geometry 
to any pupil from five to twenty years of age, therefore 
geometry ought to be made in a given year or term the 
subject of study from the top to the bottom of our public 
school system ? " I should say that to apply such an argu- 
ment to the International Lesson study of the Bible was 
neither logic, nor pedagogy, nor science, nor fact. Pro- 
fessor Winchester is right when he says that most of the 
best literature in the world is not beyond the apprehension 
of a boy in his " teens." " He may not fully comprehend 
it. . . . As a rule, all the great epic writing, the litera- 
ture of great action, based on broad and obvious motive, 
appeals to sympathies that are strong at an early age." 1 
I have seen the truth illustrated over and over again 
among children. 

So Oliver Wendell Holmes says : " You talk about read- 
ing Shakespeare, using him as an expression for the high- 
est intellect, and you wonder that any common person 
should be so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can 
rise above the text which lies before him. But think a 
moment. A child's reading of Shakespeare is one thing, 
1 Address at the Religious Education Association meeting at Philadelphia. 



152 THE FRONT LINE 

and Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. 
The saturation point of each mind differs from that of 
every other." 1 

The Bible is literature, and history, and story, and 
biography, and the kind of grading for these studies is 
entirely different from the grading for mathematics or 
languages. 

Moreover, there are no day schools beyond the Kinder- 
garten age where nothing is taught but stories for one 
age, and history for another, and biography for another. 
And there are no boys and girls existing for whom these 
alone are the best or most natural material for their entire 
studies. 

Again, it is simply a fact that there are many schools 
really graded in the International Lessons according to 
material as well as treatment. This grading has been 
becoming more and more perfect through the discus- 
sions that have been going on, and the examples set, 
and the scientific study of the child and of the art of 
teaching. 

There are still imperfections in details, perhaps some of 
them necessary, but these are far more than overbalanced 
by the advantages of the general system. 

Again, the International Lessons are an orderly, connected 
scheme of lessons. Through each Testament it moves con- 
secutively according to the order of the history as given 
in the Bible, with the Prophets and Epistles set in their 
places in the history. 

The movement does not, and never did, consist of seven 
or eight verses selected disconnectedly here and there in 
the Bible, but sections of the history joined in consecutive 
1 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 133. 



A STUDY IN GRADING 153 

order, just as one travels through a country, not by stop- 
ping at every interesting village, but by making great cities 
and noble natural scenes the centres of a whole region. 
Thus it moves through the Bible once in six years. This 
method gives a better general knowledge of the Bible than 
any other scheme yet presented. It is more connected 
and less "hop, skip, and jump" than other schemes. 

It is a very curious objection that the International 
Lessons have been going over the Bible every six or seven 
years for thirty years. How else can the young get a 
full knowledge of the Bible at all ? I pity the Christian 
that does not read his Bible through as often as once 
in six years. And as to its being monotonous, those 
of us who have gone over it many times find it more 
radiant each time, revealing new aspects, setting out the 
truths in fuller light, — the last time far better than 
the first. 

The Advantages of the International System. — Pro- 
fessor Sanders in his president's address before the Reli- 
gious Education Association, and Professors Burton and 
Mathews in Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School, 
have very frankly and fairly stated these advantages. 
But I wish to recall, to emphasize, and to add to their 
presentation. 

1. Nearly all the advantages claimed for other systems 
are equally adapted to the International system. I have 
before me a small volume presenting a new graded system 
and a pamphlet presenting the most popular of the sys- 
tems which claim to be graded according to pedagogical 
principles, and there is scarcely one of their principles 
which cannot be adapted to the uniform system as de- 
scribed above. 



154 THE FKONT LINE 

The International system is a flexible system and a live 
system, and in its desire to grow into "the stature of a 
perfect man in Christ Jesus," absorbs good from every 
source. "Whatever lion eats becomes lion." Epictetus 
says that sheep eat grass, but it is wool that grows on 
their backs. I am delighted to acknowledge my personal 
indebtedness to other systems. 

It is easy to prove the superiority of one system by 
comparing its possibilities with what is actually put in 
practice by another, or the best use of one by the worst 
use of another. But time and use decide in the end. 
Most methods can be adapted to any scheme of lessons. 

Take, for instance, the seven " next steps forward " 
named at the first meeting of the Religious Education 
Association (see p. 183) ; and " the Characteristics of the 
Best Lesson Systems," from Dr. Smith's book : — 

(a) Subject- Graded, i.e. the Right Subject at the right 
stage of the child's Mental Development. 

(5) Source or Heuristic Method. Actual, tangible use 
of Bible, Prayer Book, History, etc., as the Source of 
Knowledge. 

(c) Written Home Work and Home Study. 

(cT) New Material in Class Work and New Points-of- 
View in Reviewing Home Work. 

(/) An Intimate Knowledge of Bible Geography. 
(Physical and Historical.) 

(/) Abundant Use of Pictures and Religious Art. 

(#) Use of " Means of Expression. " Hand Work, Maps, 
Modelling, Written Work, Picture Scrap Books, Model- 
Making, etc. 

(K) Wise Correlation with Secular Subjects and Day 
School Knowledge. 



A STUDY IK GRADING 155 

(i) Thoroughly Churchly and Doctrinally sound and 
definite. 

2. The International system beyond all others favors 
Bible study in the home. The lessons and daily readings 
are used at family prayers. The parents are prepared to 
answer questions of children in different grades. The 
subjects and characters are discussed together, instead of 
mothers having to study several different lessons as I 
know mothers to do. 

3. No other system gives such unity to the school it- 
self, — in its devotional atmosphere, in its reviews, in its 
general exercises, in its use of pictures, stereopticons, in 
obtaining prepared teachers in emergencies. 

4. Under no other system can so much be done for 
training and preparing teachers, by teachers' meetings for 
the school, by union teachers' classes for a whole town or 
city, under the most expert teachers, by a comparison of 
views as teachers meet incidentally, by public lectures and 
normal classes under expert Bible scholars and teachers, 
which can be immediately put into practice. 

5. Under no other system is it possible to have so 
much of the power which comes from a magnificent unity 
and concentration of religious forces, uniting nearly all 
denominations, impressing the whole community with its 
power, interacting for mutual improvement. Rev. Dr. 
William Walter Smith, Secretary of the Sunday School 
Commission, Diocese of New York, writes thus in his 
excellent book on Sunday School Teaching : — 

" There are over two hundred various Text Books and 
Systems now being used in the Episcopal Church alone. 
There are forty in one Diocese. There is no likelihood 
that a child going from one School to another will have a 



156 THE FRONT LINE 

similar system or grading. Every change of Assistant 
Minister or of Superintendents means a new experimenta- 
tion in lessons. Confusion and despair reign supreme in 
the Sunday School world. 'This ought not so to be.' No 
local movements for Sunday School Betterment can accom- 
plish much without cooperation, federation, and extra- 
parochial interest." 

This is equally true of the Sunday School world as a 
whole. The power of this unity is nobly illustrated by 
the Christian Endeavor movement, which has multiplied 
the power and usefulness of the young people's meetings 
and work a hundredfold over the old plan of separate 
independent meetings in each church, insomuch that it 
has distinctly changed the religious atmosphere of the 
whole country. 

6. No other sj^stem can provide such good helps for 
the teacher and the scholar. The great number of per- 
sons employed brings out the best by natural selection. 
The greatness of the competition urges every one inter- 
ested to do his very best, lest he be left behind in the 
race. The immense number of helps published reduces 
the price to the very lowest terms. "The good" may 
sometimes be "the enemy of the best," but more often it 
is the means of making the best better. 

It is said that there are too many helps, just as there 
are too many books. But there are seventeen millions of 
people to use them. No one need use any more of them 
than he desires ; and he gains the opportunity of select- 
ing the ones he can use to most advantage. 

The helps in no way prevent research, but are a con- 
tinual inspiration to further research. Leigh Hunt named 
one of his books The Indicator, from the bird which indi- 



A STUDY IN GRADING 157 

cates to the honey-hunters where the bees have laid up 
their treasures. The lesson helps are indicators pointing 
out the treasures in God's Word, sweeter than honey and 
richer than fine gold. 

There are very few teachers who can possess all the 
needful books for complete research on the whole Bible, 
and fewer still have time to use them to advantage. 
They no more " cram " than all books, sermons, or lec- 
tures cram. A reviewer in a late Outlook truly says, "A 
good illustration borrowed is better than a poor illustra- 
tion which is, or is thought to be, original." For the 
great majority of teachers the choice lies between poor 
teaching witli imperfect or meagre helps and good teach- 
ing with the best and most suggestive helps available. 
For good helps are not a well, but a fountain; and not 
merely a fountain, but one like that of the Oriental legend, 
each drop from which opened a new fountain from the 
sands on which it fell. 

Thus the true use of helps is : — 
To furnish the facts. 
To teach them correctly. 
To show them from all sides. 

To enable us to digest them and make them our own. 
To awaken thought. 
To suggest new truths. 
To suggest new applications of old truths. 
To suggest methods of teaching. 
To give inspiration and interest in the subject. 

7. In conclusion, no system has yet exhausted its possi- 
bilities. I rejoice with all my heart in the new awakening 
and in all that is being done in every direction. Which- 



158 THE FRONT LINE 

ever one succeeds best will embody the most of the princi- 
ples which are necessary to the best Sunday School work. 

No system can work the miracle of the religious educa- 
tion of the young through sessions of one hour a week. 
The Sunday School must be supplemented by pastors' 
classes and normal classes at other times and by supple- 
mental lessons and longer study hours. 

But the best way toward improvement is through put- 
ting the various theories into practice, and determining 
what is really best by actual experiment. In the words 
of Rev. John L. Keedy, in the July Biblical World: "For 
myself, I do not believe that any curriculum, however 
well graded, or any courses of study, however well pre- 
pared, by any group of men with a scholarly knowledge 
of the Bible and with a theoretical knowledge of our 
Sunday Schools, will meet the needs as well as those 
which are the outgrowth of experiment and experience. 
While I am sure a graded course well chosen and well 
wrought out would meet a real need and be a great gain, 
yet I am quite as certain that nothing can so surely solve 
the problem as an interested and competent teacher who 
works out his own course and communicates his own in- 
terested and eager spirit to his pupils. If by all of our 
addresses and discussions and committees and inquiries 
we disseminate knowledge about material and method, 
and impart the spirit of eagerness to superintendents and 
teachers, we have furnished that which the Sunday School 
situation most needs." 



VII 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE, AND ITS 

REMEDY 

That there is a most lamentable ignorance of many 
things in the Bible on the part of many of the children 
and youth of to-day, as well as of their elders, is frequently 
stated by persons who ought to know what the facts are. 
Says the Journal and Messenger, " It comes from various 
sources that the boys and girls of to-day are amazingly 
ignorant of the Bible." Rev. J. T. Briscoe began an 
address at a Sunday School convention in England thus : 
" The Sunday School system to-day is crucified between 
two thieves — sacerdotalism on the one hand, and secular- 
ism on the other, and of the two the sacerdo talis t is 
likely to prove the impenitent malefactor." We all know 
instances of this Bible ignorance, and deplore it. It is 
exploited in many addresses, and many tests are made, 
and the sad results are reported on the principle stated 
by Mr. Ruskin in his Seven Lamps of Architecture : " There 
is a crust about the impressible part of men's minds 
which must be pierced through before they can be touched 
to the quick ; and though we may prick at it, and scratch 
at it in a thousand separate places, we might as well have 
let it alone if we do not come through somewhere with 
a deep thrust ; ... it need not be even so wide as 

159 



160 THE FRONT LINE 

a church door, so that it be enough." The facts reported 
do make a deep thrust through the crust of indifference 
as to what our children are learning and gaining in the 
Sunday School, enough to startle into wakefulness " the 
seven sleepers of Ephesus." It is interesting and profit- 
able for us to study some of these tests, as they not only 
impress us with the need of removing the ignorance, but 
are themselves a means for doing it. 

President Thwing, of Western Reserve University, at 
the first Bible exercise of the freshman class of 1894-1895, 
gave a test to thirty-four young men, all but one of whom 
was connected with some one of nine religious congrega- 
tions in the Central States. He wrote out on the black- 
board twenty-two quotations from the writings of the 
most noted English-speaking poet of the present century, 
Alfred Tennyson, with whose writings all educated persons 
are more or less familiar. These twenty-two extracts all 
contained references or allusions to the Holy Scriptures, 
and were as follows : — 

" My sin was a thorn 
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow." 

— Supposed Confessions. 

11 As manna on my wilderness." — Ibid. 

u That God would move, 
And strike the hard, hard rock, and thence, 
Sweet in their utmost bitterness, 
Would issue tears of penitence." — Ibid. 

" Like that strange angel which of old, 
Until the breaking of the light, 
Wrestled with wandering Israel." — To . 

" Like Hezekiah's, backward rims 
The shadow of my days." — Will Waterproof. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 161 

"Joshua's moon in Ajalon." — Locksley Hall. 

" A heart as rough as Esau's hand." — Godiva. 

" Gash thyself, priest, and honor thy brute Baal." — Aylmer's Field. 

" Ruth amid the fields of corn." — Ibid. 

" Pharaoh's darkness." — Ibid. 

" A Jonah's gourd, 
Up in one night and dae to sudden sun." — The Princess. 

" Stiff as Lot's wife." — Ibid. 
" Arimathsean Joseph." — The Holy Grail. 

" For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine." 

— The Last Tournament. 

" Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ, 
Our Arthur kept his best until the last." — The Holy Grail. 

" And marked me even as Cain." — Queen Mary. 

" The Church on Peter's rock." — Ibid. 

" Let her eat dust like the serpent, and be driven out of her Paradise.''' 

— Becket. 
"A whole Peter's sheet." — Ibid. 

" The godless Jephtha vows his child. . . . 
To one cast of the dice." — The Flight. 

" A Jacob's ladder falls." — Early Spring. 

" Follow Light and do the Right — for man can half control his 

doom — 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb." 

— Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After. 

It is to be noticed that the allusions contained in these 
extracts are not at all recondite. 



162 THE FRONT LINE 

The President published the record of the answers, as 

follows : Of the 34 students 9 failed to understand the 

quotation, 

" My sin was as a thorn 

Among the thorns that girt Thy brow." 

11 failed to apprehend the " manna on my wilderness." 

16 were likewise ignorant of the significance of " strik- 
ing the rock." 

16 also knew nothing about the "wrestling of Jacob 
and the angel." 

32 had never heard of " the shadow turning back on the 
dial for Hezekiah's lengthening life." 

26 were ignorant of " Joshua's moon." 

19 failed to indicate " the peculiar condition of Esau's 
hand." 

22 were unable to explain "the allusion to Baal." 

19 had apparently never read " the idyl of Ruth and 
Boaz." 

18 failed to indicate the meaning of " Pharaoh's dark- 
ness." 

28 were laid low by the question about "Jonah's 
gourd." 

9, and 9 only, were unable to explain the allusion to 
"Lot's wife." 

23 did not understand who was meant by " Arimathsean 
Joseph." 

22 also had not read the words of Christ sufficiently 
to explain " For I have flung thee pearls and find thee 
swine." 

24 had apparently not so read the account of " Christ's 
first miracle " as to be able to explain the reference. 

11 did not understand "the mark which Cain bore." 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 163 

25 were as ignorant as a heathen of " the foundation of 
the Church on Peter." 

12, and 12 only, had not gathered up knowledge suffi- 
cient to indicate certain truths about "the serpent in 
Eden." 

27 were paralyzed by the allusion, "A whole Peter's 
sheet." 

24 were unable to write anything as to "Jephtha's 
vow." 

11 onty, however, were struck dumb by the allusion to 
"Jacob's ladder." 

But 16 were able to write a proper explanation of " the 
deathless angel seated in the vacant tomb." 

In a word, to each of these 84 men 22 questions were put 
which would demand 748 answers. The record shows that 
out of a possible 748 correct answers, only 328 were given ; 
not quite 44 per cent. 

These quotations were given to a senior class of 38 
negro and Indian students at Hampton, Virginia, none of 
whom could enter college without three years' further 
study. Of the 836 possible answers, 645 were given cor- 
rectly, or 77 per cent. One student answered all the 
questions; three, all but one. 1 

Dr. George A. Coe, the well-known Professor of Phi- 
losophy in the Northwestern University, in order to test 
the Bible knowledge of his students, seized the opportu- 
nity " to put a few simple queries about the Bible to nearly 
one hundred college students. Most of these persons, no 
doubt, were brought up in Christian homes and had en- 
joyed such instruction as the average Sunday School or 
pulpit of our day affords." The questions were : — 
1 See Century Magazine for December, 1900. 



164 THE FRONT LINE 

1. What is the Pentateuch? 

2. What is the Higher Criticism of the Scriptures? 

3. Does the Book of Jude belong to the Old Testament 
or to the New? 

4. Name one of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. 

5. Name one of the Judges of the Old Testament. 

6. Name three of the Kings of Israel. 

7. Name three Prophets. 

8. Give one of the Beatitudes. 

9. Quote a verse from the letter to the Romans. 

Ninety-six papers were returned. 

8 answered correctly all 12 answered correctly 4 
13 answered correctly 8 11 answered correctly 3 
11 answered correctly 7 13 answered correctly 2 

5 answered correctly 6 11 answered correctly 1 

9 answered correctly 5 3 answered correctly 

The number out of 96 giving the correct answer to the 
first question was 60 ; to the second, 16 ; to the third, 56 j 
to the fourth, 61 ; to the fifth, 45 ; to the sixth, 47 ; to the 
seventh, 52 ; to the eighth, 76 ; to the ninth, 31. 

As the number of papers was approximately 100, these 
figures may substantially be taken as percentages. The 
total number of correct answers was 444, out of 864, or 
nearly 52 per cent, a little more than half. 

Dr. Schauffler of New York on reading this statement 
was " filled with wonder at the crass ignorance of so many 
college students." It occurred to him "to try the same 
set of questions in a large young women's Bible class in 
Olivet Sunday School, the conditions of examination being 
exactly the same as those for the Northwestern University 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 



165 



students." In his Pastoral Leadership of Sunday School 
Forces he gives the results. They are as follows : — 



Question. 


Northwestern 
University. 


Olivet. 


Correctly 
answered. 


Correctly 
answered. 


What is the Pentateuch? 

What is the Higher Criticism of the Scrip- 
tures? 

Does the Book of Jude belong to the Old 
Testament or to the New ? 

Name one of the Patriarchs of the Old Testa- 
ment 


62+% 
16.6 

58+ 

63.5 

47- 

49- 

54+ 

80 

32.5 


80% 

80 
70 


Name one of the Judges of the Old Testament 
Name three of the Kings of Israel .... 

Name three Prophets 

Give one of the Beatitudes 

Quote a verse from the letter to the Romans 


60 
100 
100 

90 

70 


Percentage correctly answered .... 


51.4 


72 



" Professor Coe gives some strange facts with regard to 
blunders made by his students. As for example, among 
the judges were named Solomon, Jeremiah, and Leviti- 
cus; among the prophets were Matthew, Luke, and John; 
Herod and Ananias appeared as kings of Israel; Nebu- 
chadnezzar figured both as judge and king of Israel ; the 
Pentateuch was confused with the Gospels and in one 
case with 'the seven Gospels.' Among the Beatitudes 
were the following : ' Blessed are the poor in heart, 
for they shall see God ; ' ' Blessed are the law-givers ; ' 
'Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be fed.'" 

It should be noted that questions 2 and 9 are very diffi- 



166 THE FRONT LINE 

cult for young people, or even for educated people who 
have not a very good memory. At the Congregational 
Superintendents' Union in Boston the following state- 
ment was made by Mr. South worth, the head-master of 
a city school, and afterwards superintendent of schools in 
the city, and a superintendent of a Sunday School : — 

" Do you think," said he, " that the essentials of Bible knowledge 
are taught in our Sunday Schools? Let me give you a bit of my 
experience. I asked a large number of Sunday School scholars 
from 15 to 17 years old to write for me a little life of Christ, just 
as I might have asked them, had they been public school scholars, to 
write a life of Washington or Lincoln. Here are some paragraphs 
taken from the compositions I received in response to that request : — 

" < There were no years before Christ, therefore he was born in the 
year 1/ 

" ' Jesus was the father of Christ. He was born in Jerusalem in 
the year 1/ 

" ' Jesus was born in an old barn of Jerusalem.' 

" ' Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. His parents were very 
old.' 

" ' Christ went to work when 31 years old, in the same field with 
his father. After a while he began to teach the Bible and made the 
Ten Commandments on a mount.' " 

Such answers can be multiplied to almost any extent. 
A young man objected to the Bible as inaccurate because, 
as he said : — 

" In one of the Gospels we are told that Joseph was the husband 
of Mary, while we are carefully informed elsewhere that he married 
the daughter of Potiphera, the priest of On. I don't want to pin my 
faith to any of the statements of such a book." 

Another could not believe that the children of Israel car- 
ried Noah's ark forty years through the wilderness. And 
again, here is a literal copy from Miss Graham of what 
one pupil wrote : — 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 167 

" Esau was a man who wrote fables and sold the copyright to a 
publisher for a bottle of potash." 

It looks more like a joke made on purpose. 

Our first inquiry should be, How much do these things 
signify? What value shall we put upon them as tests of 
the work done in school ? 

1. I have made a good many tests and experiments, 
and the average results in every case are better than those 
given. A large number of Sunday Schools in Newton, 
Massachusetts, took an examination, unannounced before- 
hand, on the Life of Christ, and the percentage of right 
answers was at least 75 per cent (I have not the exact 
figures now). Several times in our own school we have 
given tests on the Life of Christ like the one which Mr. 
Southworth used and always with results much better 
than he claimed. 

In the Outlook some years ago a lady wrote her experi- 
ence with a class of girls twelve years of age, in which 
was included the daughters of the minister and deacons. 
She asked them, Who was Moses, and then other Old Tes- 
tament characters, and not one of them knew the answers, 
except to " Who was the first man? " the most disputed of 
all. Frequently, after that, in visiting Sunday Schools, 
I selected a class of about the age she tested, and with 
the permission of the teacher to whom I told the above 
experience, asked the scholars, Who was Moses? I said 
the form of the question was very bad, for no one could 
know which of a dozen answers was desired, and I ex- 
plained what I wanted, but gave no clew. Nearly every 
scholar in each class knew something about Moses. Then 
I asked them, Who was George Washington? and with 
the exception of a class of boys who had just been study- 



168 THE FRONT LINE 

ing United States history, I did not find one who did not 
know as much about Moses as about Washington. 

At the close of the study of the Life of Christ this 
year (1904) I gave for the Review, in my Select Notes 
and in the Quarterlies, a test similar to that of President 
Thwing, consisting of references in literature to events in 
the Gospels we had been studying. I have heard so many 
expressions of interest in the plan that I give the refer- 
ences for the benefit of any who may wish to test their 
scholars or themselves. I asked teachers to send me a 
report, and the results as collated by my assistant are, 
that of 89 persons reported, 28 answered all the references 
correctly, and of the 2444 questions answered 74 per cent 
were correct. 

Tennyson. 

1. " My sin was a thorn 
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow." 

— Supposed Confessions. 

2. " Arimathsean Joseph." — The Holy Grail. 

3. " For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine." 

— The Last Tournament. 

4. " Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ, 

Our Arthur kept his best until the last." 

— The Holy Grail. 

5. " The church on Peter's rock." — Queen Mary. 

6. "Follow Light and do the Right — for man can half control his 

doom — 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb." 
— Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After. 
Whittier. 

7. " Whispering, by its open door : 

' Fear not ! He hath gone before.' " — My Dream. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 169 

8. " Whate'er hath touched his garment's hem." 

— World's Convention. 

9. " And broke with publicans the bread of shame." — The Gallows. 

10. " He who cooled the furnace and smoothed the stormy wave." 

— Cassandra Southwick. 

11. " ' Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith, 

1 And angels shall thy feet upbear.' " — The Answer. 

12. " But where are the sisters who hastened to greet 

The lowly Redeemer, and sit at his feet." — Palestine. 

13. " O Thou ! at whose rebuke the grave 

Back to warm life the sleeper gave." 

— The Human Sacrifice. 

14. "When 'get thee behind me, Satan' was the language of my 

heart." — Cassandra Southwick. 

15. " And the voice that breathed peace to the waves of the sea." 

— Palestine. 
Shakespeare. 

16. " Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands." 

— Richard II. 
D. M. Mulock Craik. 

17. " Only, — O God, O God, to cry for bread, 

And get a stone ! " — Only a Woman. 
Longfellow. 

18. " And each face did shine like the Holy One's face at Mt. Tabor." 

— Children of the Lord's Supper. 

RUSKIN. 

19. " The house unroofed by faith.' 1 — Stones of Venice. 

20. " Our Father's business." — Ethics of the Dust. 

Milton. 

21. « The Pilot of the Galilean Lake." — Lycidas. 

Browning. 

22. " Who went and danced, and got men's heads cut off." 

— Fra hippo Lippi. 



170 THE FBONT LINE 

Mrs. Browning. 

23. " The star is lost in the dark ; 

The manger is lost in the straw." — Christmas Gifts. 

24. " Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear, 

Since he who walks on the sea is here." 

— View across the Roman Campagna. 

25. " Griping the Bag of the traitor Dead." — Ibid. 

26. " Couldst thou not watch one hour?" — Casa Guidi Windows. 

27. " It went up single, echoless, ' My God, I am forsaken.' " 

— Cowper's Grave. 
Thackeray. 

28. " Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel, 

To spurn the rags of Lazarus." — The end of the Play. 

Jane Taylor. 

29. " The torn scrap of a leaf, 

Containing the prayer of the penitent thief." 

— The Philosopher's Scales. 

30. " Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice 

One pearl to outweigh, — 'twas the pearl of great price." — Ibid. 

2. In order to estimate the value to be put on such 
tests, it should be noted that every case of ignorance in 
the Sunday School can be matched and more than 
matched in the day schools on the subjects taught there. 
For years I have kept two large envelopes, one labelled 
Sunday School Ignorance, and the other Day School 
Ignorance. 

Dr. Schaufner says that in some examination papers 
presented to him as showing Sunday School ignorance, 
there w T ere more failures in the things, like spelling and 
grammar, which belong to Day School ignorance. Just 
the other day the head of a department in a Brooklyn 
High School complained bitterly of the Grammar Schools 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 171 

that the scholars from them did not know how to spell, 
nor even know the alphabet so as to be able to look up 
words in the dictionary. 

" Complaint is heard on the New York side of the river, 
among merchants and other business men, that boys sent 
out from the city schools come to the store and the shop 
densely ignorant in the commonest branches of learning ; 
that often they cannot write a simple letter without atro- 
cious blunders in grammar and spelling, and are unable to 
cast up a column of figures correctly." 

Here is a report from a professor of English at Williams 
College. " Recently, finding that his elective classes knew 
little about the best-known writers in English literature, 
he addressed a series of questions to a class of forty sopho- 
mores. These students may be assumed fairly to repre- 
sent the average acquirements of college undergraduates 
at that stage. Out of the forty, ten were unable to men- 
tion six plays by Shakespeare ; fourteen did not know who 
wrote In Memoriam ; twenty-two had never heard of 
Sam Weller ; twenty-three could not tell who wrote The 
Mill on the Floss ; twenty-six could not mention a work 
by Ruskin ; thirty-four could not tell who FalstafT was, and 
thirty-five could not mention a single poem by either 
Wordsworth or Browning." 

A writer in a late number of the Outlook reports some 
conversations with boys ranging in age from ten to fifteen 
years, and also with some voters, all educated in the public 
schools of New York City. They did not know the mean- 
ing of common things reported in the newspapers, as 
municipal, municipality, the President's cabinet, ambas- 
sador, federal. Their answers were some of them very 
curious. 



172 THE FRONT LINE 

Mr. Cleveland and other eminent politicians will be 
surprised to hear that the Philippines " are islands of fugi- 
tive savages, most of whom are democrats and cannibals." 

Whole books have been written exploiting these blunders. 

Before we undertake to estimate the meaning and bear- 
ing of these facts on both day school and Sunday School, 
let us go on a little farther in our search for facts. 

3. It is well to remember that very few adults, even 
educated men, — men of talent, and power, and usefulness, 
— can remember definite facts, or quote word for word. 
" A London paper says that barristers hold that the pro- 
portion of persons who can state a fact or quote a con- 
versation with complete correctness is about one in a 
thousand, and concludes an article with the assertion that 
'Man is not a text-quoting animal.' " 

I have before me statements concerning Harvard pro- 
fessors and even President Roosevelt, who misquoted 
Scripture. It is related that in setting up a plea of self- 
defence in a murder case Gen. B. F. Butler quoted from 
Satan's words in Job, saying, " We have it on the highest 
authority that all that a man hath will he give for his life." 

The Evangelist Munhall used frequently in his addresses 
to offer a finely bound Bible to any one present who would 
repeat correctly twelve verses from twelve different books 
of the Bible, and state the chapter and verse. I was told 
that he had never found a person who could do it. The 
only time I ever met him was in Paris in 1894, and I asked 
him if this was true. He said that he had lately found 
one colored boy who could do it, but never any other. I 
have tried the experiment with educated persons familiar 
with the Bible, and I have never yet found a person who 
could stand that simple test. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 173 

A few years ago while making a Sunday School tour 
through the principal cities of Ohio, I said to a very in- 
telligent man in the hotel dining room : " I do not believe 
that one-quarter of the people in this room can tell how 
many states there are in the Union. He was sure he could, 
and he named forty-two states and ten territories. As we 
were leaving we noticed in the morning paper a statement 
that the government were questioning how to arrange the 
forty-three stars on the flag ; and the evening paper of the 
same day at Toledo stated that it was finally decided how 
to arrange the forty-four stars. 

Only a day or two ago, desiring to be certain before I 
wrote it down, I asked a number of people in an unusually 
intelligent company, whether there had been fifteen or 
sixteen amendments to the Constitution of the United 
States. There was no certainty in the answers till I came 
to some teachers, one of whom, a teacher of history, con- 
firmed their statement by the history. How many of you 
can tell which is the right number, or how many states 
there are in the Union ? 

It has been said that no college president could pass the 
entrance examination to his own college, though he really 
knows a thousand times as much as those who can pass. 

4. It is hardly fair to judge of the results of any sys- 
tem of instruction by its poorer scholars, or of a fruit tree 
by its wormy fruit. We know that a marvellous amount 
of good education is obtained in many directions in spite 
of imperfection in other directions. It will be seen from 
these examples that memory tests are not in any case a 
complete test of knowledge of any subject, much less of 
the knowledge of the details of the Bible, which it takes 
several years to go over in one half hour once a week. 



174 THE FRONT LINE 

Who is so educated that he does not have to turn con- 
tinually to reference books and dictionaries? I keep a 
number always at hand so that when persecuted in one 
dictionary I can flee to another. 

Then in most school examinations, these follow close 
upon the study of the subjects, the colleges giving pre- 
liminary examinations for this purpose. 

We must always consider, in the results, the fact that 
many persons may know the fact, while ignorant of terms 
familiar to us expressing those facts. For instance, in 
a late examination paper, or rather test paper, in our 
Sunday School, one of the questions was, Name the four 
evangelists. One of the scholars came to me and asked 
who were meant by " evangelists," he never having heard 
the term. Speaking of this to a college student who has 
been brought up all his life in a Bible atmosphere, he 
declared that he did not recognize the term as referring to 
the Bible. But he knew who were the authors of the 
four Gospels. One might know the whole Bible by heart 
and not know how to define the Higher Criticism. 

" Mr. John Tetlow, of the Girls' High School in Boston, 
whose name carries as much weight as that of any one 
educator engaged in fitting girls for college, last year 
wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript, stating his experi- 
ence with a Harvard examination paper for which an hour 
was allowed. Mr. Tetlow took fifty-six minutes to write 
the paper, so he had only four minutes to look it over. 
On re-reading it at leisure the next day, he felt that he 
should be ashamed to have his spelling, punctuation, or 
rhetoric judged by it." 

It is reported that a martinet school teacher, after hear- 
ing a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher, went to him with 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNOKANCE OF THE BIBLE 175 

gratitude for his teaching and preaching power, but also 
said, "Why, Mr. Beecher, I counted eighty-three gram- 
matical mistakes in your sermon this morning." "Is 
that all ? " replied Mr. Beecher, " I'll bet you there were 
a hundred." 

One of the most brilliant professors in Boston said to 
me that when he saw the stenographic report of one of his 
extempore addresses, he tore it up in disgust and wrote 
out what he wanted to say. 

I never was more surprised in my life than the first time 
I saw one of my extempore addresses reported verbatim. 

Once more the memory tests are no test of the main 
results at which the Sunday School is aiming. The spir- 
itual and character results are largely, not entirely, inde- 
pendent of the exact memory of details. 

In the charming illustrated book, The Holy Land, by 
Fulleylove and Kelman, the author writes : " In Syria 
. . . the most skilful dragoman cannot understand a map, 
nor guide you to your destination by geographical direc- 
tions. . . . On unknown ground a Syrian is of little use 
as a guide. . . . He finds his way partly ... by the 
habit of noticing minute features of the road which entirely 
escape the ordinary observer. A story is told of a thief 
in a certain town in Palestine who entered a house and 
stole nothing. He simply went out and claimed the house 
before the judge. When the case came to trial, the thief 
challenged the owner to tell how many steps there were in 
the stair, how many panes of glass in the windows, and 
a long catalogue of other such details. This the owner 
could not do, and when the thief gave the numbers cor- 
rectly, the house was at once given to him as its obvious 
owner," although the real owner had lived there all his life. 



176 THE FRONT LINE 

A man may live all his life in the Gospel spirit, obeying 
its precepts, at home in its teachings, and yet be unable to 
tell how many chapters or verses there are, or how many 
miracles they record, and many other details. 

At a convention some one said that in our Sunday 
School we failed to teach the commandments and Bible 
facts to the children, while in the Episcopal and Catholic 
schools all the children knew them. The following Sun- 
day I went into a Sunday School and when asked to speak 
I requested permission to ask some questions. "How 
many of you know the Ten Commandments ? " About 
one-fourth held up their hands. But, I said, I do not 
mean how many can say them word for word, but how 
many can tell what is the first commandment, or the third, 
or the fifth, etc. Three-fourths of the school held up their 
hands. But the minister and the superintendent came to 
me to explain why they had not held up their hands. I 
had not expected them to, of course. But they said that 
they had learned the Ten Commandments out of the 
Bible, and they were not numbered there. They knew 
the commandments and kept them, without knowing them 
by number. 

Thousands live the commandments who cannot repeat 
them word for word. Many gain power from literature 
who do not know much of what is taught in the schools 
concerning the books and their authors. 

Now, I am not saying these things to excuse ignorance 
of ordinary Bible facts, for I believe it is important to 
know them, and that they are a real help to knowing, 
remembering, understanding, and living the great spirit- 
ual and character-forming truths of the Bible. 

It is the edge of the axe that does the cutting, and is 



SUNDAY SCHOOL IGNORANCE OF THE BIBLE 177 

the most important thing about the axe ; but the heavy 
iron back of the edge multiplies its cutting power. All 
Bible knowledge, especially an accurate knowledge of its 
main facts, are essential to the best character-forming 
work of the Sunday School. 

There are several things which can greatly diminish the 
amount of Sunday School ignorance of the Bible, all of 
them simple and easily possible. 

1. The right kind of Reviews, in which the main facts 
of the quarter's lessons are clearly set forth and drilled 
into the memory. 

2. The right kind of supplemental lessons can do for 
the Intermediate classes what is done to some extent now 
in the Primary grade. They must largely consist of ques- 
tions with definite answers, covering the points most 
needed to be known, and in which failures are most often 
shown. 

3. But the greatest means is the daily reading of 
the Bible at home. A part of the time the whole 
Bible in course. At the door of neglect of daily Bible 
reading lies the chief cause of the ignorance of the 
Bible, so often charged to the account of the Sunday 
School. 

" Of about forty students in the freshman class in a 
certain college, six of whom were ministers' sons, the 
president found that not one had read the Bible through ; 
only five had read the New Testament, one had read the 
Bible as far as Proverbs, few had read through the books 
of Moses, all were ignorant of the Prophets, and not one 
could give the names of the books of the Bible. And these 
were educated young men, fitted for college." In mak- 
ing tests on this point I have found a larger proportion 



178 THE FRONT LINE 

of adults than of young people who have read the whole 
Bible. 

The Young People's societies are doing much, but the 
Sunday School teachers can do still more by persuading 
their scholars to daily home study and home reading of 
the Bible. And the parents can do most of all. 



VIII 



SIGNS OF GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY EX~ 
PRESSED IN ORGANIZATIONS FOR THAT PURPOSE 

Arthur Helps, in his Friends in Council, makes the wise 
man of affairs say that the prophet whose range of vision 
is narrowed to a few years is apt to be a pessimist, while 
he whose vision sweeps over centuries is full of joy and 
hope. So he who sees only certain phases or forms of 
Bible study, under certain conditions, in certain localities, 
in some narrow vista of the years, is apt to abide in that 
discouraged condition best expressed by the words in 
which Emerson is said to have characterized his visit to 
Ruskin, " Solid gloom." 

But a larger vision, a longer period for comparison, a 
wider range of methods and forms of study, a broader 
extent of territory, will change the whole aspect of the 
spiritual landscape. The " seven fears " will be changed 
into " seven joys," as, to the king in the Light of Asia, 
the old flag rent by the blast was but the rending of 
false superstitions, the flinging away of the gems like a 
shower was but the scattering of precious truths to the 
people, the ten elephants that shook the earth with their 
tread were the ten great gifts of wisdom, and the drum 
that pealed like a thunderstorm was but the sound of the 
preached word "heard round the world." 

I. Let us first take a glimpse at the growth of Bible 
study in the Sunday School as the leading Bible study 

179 



180 THE FRONT LINE 

department of the Church. One does not need to listen 
very intently to hear a dirge in a minor key to which is 
set such monotonous refrains as : — 

"The decadence of the Sunday School." 

" Dying at the top." 

"Sunday School ignorance of the Bible." 

" The decline in numbers." 

"The Sunday School failure." 

" The Christian Endeavor waning." 

Men of wisdom and science see these things, for they 
are there to be seen ; and we ought to see them till they 

" Stir a fever in the blood of age 
And make the infant sinew strong as steel." 

But such views are for the most part partial and local 
and narrow. No cause ever triumphed when its soldiers 
marched to dirges, but only when they were inspired and 
stirred to the very depths by songs of courage and hope. 
Of all the Psalms there is but one that has not in it 
the note of hope of better things. There is not one of 
the prophets, however earnest in his warnings, and terri- 
ble in his pictures of the fruit of sin, but has also bright 
visions of the good time coming. The glory of the Greeks 
waned, for its age of gold was in the far past. Prophets 
and Gospels are succeeding, for their age of gold is always 
before them. 

The very abundance of the criticisms is a sign of the 
value and power of the Sunday School. It is the blooded 
horse, not the worn-out hack, which is padded and 
patched and spurred on to a faster gait. It is the good 
man whom the preachers most berate for not doing better. 
It is the best fruit tree that is most trimmed and scraped. 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 181 

There has never been an International Triennial Con- 
vention which has not shown a large increase in the 
Sunday School membership, even without adding the 
325,000 in the Home Department. The fourteen mill- 
ions in the Sunday Schools represent one-sixth of the 
whole population. Dr. Mead, in his excellent Modern 
Methods in Sunday School Work, says that " Thirteen mill- 
ions of children and youth in our country never cross the 
threshold of a Bible school, either Protestant or Roman 
Catholic." How can this be when, according to the United 
States census of 1900, the total population attending day 
schools is only 13,367,147, and the total population of 
school age, 5 to 17 years, including Negroes, Indians, and 
Mongolians, is only 21,538,024. 

Some time ago General Butler, when he was candidate 
for the governorship of Massachusetts, and was showing 
the need of reforming our day school system, stated that 
there were in the state 104,206 persons who could not read 
and write. But a look at the government statistics showed 
that 93,272 of these were born in foreign countries, 6934 
were natives of other states, and only 2486 were natives 
of this state and brought up under its school system. 

One is continually tempted to repeat Edward Everett 
Hale's famous bon mot, " Positive, i lie ' ; comparative, * liar ' ; 
superlative, 'statistics.'" I have never yet known an 
accurate census taken in any city or town which did not 
present a better showing than had been claimed. Most 
Sunday School statistics, especially those given at the 
Triennial International Conventions, are remarkably ac- 
curate on the positive side for Evangelical schools, but 
they do not include the Roman Catholics and several other 
denominations. Hence the inferences that many draw 



182 THE FRONT LINE 

from them are very far from the actual facts, for by 
merely subtracting the given Sunday School figures from 
the figures of the United States census, they count as 
unreached all the infirm and the sick, all who have been 
to Sunday School some part of the 12 years between 
5 and 17 but are not in the schools at the time the census 
was taken, and all members of Roman Catholic and some 
other schools. It is to be hoped that hereafter the whole 
Sunday School population will be included in the statis- 
tics, because so many make the facts appear much worse 
than they are by using the International statistics as if 
they were inclusive of all. 

In connection with the Sabbath School there has been a 
marvellous increase in the number of Bibles used. The 
annual sale was never so great. The two Bible societies, 
the British and the American, circulate 6,000,000 a year, 
and there are 42 private publishers besides, one of which 
alone sells 750,000 annually. The Bibles are published 
in a great variety of forms, and are far superior to the 
Bibles of half a century ago. The maps, concordances, 
pictures, text-books, and all kinds of helps are the best 
that can be obtained, while formerly there were almost 
none of these things. 

Again the literature published to help children and 
others to get at the meaning and applications of Scrip- 
ture, including pamphlets like lesson quarterlies and 
teachers' monthlies, as well as solid volumes, amounts to 
several tens of millions annually, next in amount to the 
secular newspapers. 

Never has there been so much done in the exploration 
of Bible lands for recovering the relics of the past ; never 
so much written about the Bible in secular newspapers 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 183 

and in popular magazines ; never so many books published 
relating to the Bible ; never so many courses of Bible 
study in our Colleges and Universities. It seems as if 
the moral atmosphere had been so changed that the dif- 
ference could be read from the stars. 

II. The International Sunday School Executive Commit- 
tee. — The work of this committee has been so quietly 
done, and so overshadowed by the work of the Interna- 
tional Lesson Committee, that few seem to know how vast 
is its work, how complete and extensive its organization, 
how great its working forces, how much it has accom- 
plished. Great men have summarized the religious move- 
ments and educational forces of the country without 
recognizing its work, or seeming to know that it exists. 

At the remarkable gathering of religious educators 
at Chicago in the spring of 1903, at which the Religious 
Education Association was formed, the first public meet- 
ing had for its subject, " The Next Step Forward in Reli- 
gious Education." The seven chief answers presented by 
the speakers as to what this next step should be were : — 

1. Manual training of the young in all forms of reli- 
gious activity, in preparation for their work in the church 
and in life. 

2. Making the present teachers better, and the future 
teachers better still. 

3. Greater emphasis on the teaching function of the 
ministry. 

4. An organized and aggressive campaign of universal 
Bible study according to the best educational methods. 

5. Better provisions for the training of teachers ; the 
best apparatus of all kinds, libraries, normal classes, train- 
ing schools, and the like. 



184 THE FRONT LINE 

6. Emphasis on the duty of the religious training of 
the children in the home. 

7. Bible study in colleges in the regular curriculum. 
Now the International Association for years has been 

taking the first six of these seven great steps, and urging 
them on the Sunday Schools all over the country. 

The whole country has been divided into nine great dis- 
tricts, each with an executive committee and officers. 

Every state and territory in the Union (except Alaska 
and Indian Territory) is organized to carry on this 
work. 

Each state is subdivided into smaller districts, so as to 
reach as far as possible all the Sunday Schools, and inspire 
them to better Bible work, better teaching, better grading, 
better organization. 

The general organization employs the best available 
talent. Besides the chairman, a business man who gives 
four-fifths of his time and six or seven thousand dollars a 
year to forwarding the work, there are six paid workers 
who give all their time, and a number of other special 
workers who give a portion of their time. The annual 
expenses are now about 120,000, in addition to what is 
done by the chairman. 

Besides this, there are from one to seven paid workers 
in each of the states of the Union, except seven, making 
over one hundred people employed on full time by the 
various state associations, at an expense of nearly 
1200,000. New York this year spends $16,000 ; Pennsyl- 
vania 121,000; Illinois over 110,000. All this to bring 
the best training to superintendents and teachers, and to 
make the best Bible knowledge available to all the Sunday 
Schools of the land. 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 185 

This organization stands : — 

1. For the betterment of the Sunday School all along 
the line. 

2. For teacher training, one college professor giving 
his whole time to this work. 

3. For " the assimilation of the best results of modern 
educational science." 

4. For Bible study, leaving such methods as the Higher 
Criticism and special doctrinal teaching to denominational 
and individual writers. 

5. For the graded Sunday School, along International 
lines, as containing the best possibilities for the Sunday 
School, but revised and improved as fresh light and 
experience may guide. 

6. For the widest spreading of every good thing in 
Sunday School lines throughout the whole Sunday School 
world, especially to the smaller schools which would other- 
wise be unable to come in contact with them. 

In the words of Rev. E. Morris Fergusson of New 
Jersey, one of the wisest, most progressive, and most suc- 
cessful of the state secretaries : " There are teachers and 
leaders thoroughly conversant with actual conditions in 
the average Sunday School, trained in the methods of the 
new education, and busy in the work of constructing 
plans, evolving literature and standards of method, and 
perfecting local organization among the teachers, through 
which not this and that favored school, but a large per- 
centage of all the Sunday Schools, are being brought into 
line for effective and spiritual teaching of the children." 
In addition to this general organization, many of the 
denominational houses are carrying on the same work 
separately for their own churches and Sunday Schools. 



186 THE FRONT LINE 

III. The Religious Education Association. — This great 
association grew out of a very deep, growing, and almost 
universal feeling that " the religious and moral instruc- 
tion of the young is at present inadequate, and imperfectly 
correlated with other instruction in history, literature, 
and the sciences ; that the Sunday School, as the primary 
institution for the religious and moral education of the 
young, should be conformed to a higher ideal," and 
made more efficient for its work ; and that there should 
be a more perfect and widely extended Bible study and 
Bible teaching. As the electricity pervading clouds and 
earth is condensed into a flash of lightning, so this deep 
and broad feeling was crystallized into visible form in 
February, 1903, at Chicago, in this much-needed and 
remarkable movement. 

The personnel of the Convention when it came into 
being was remarkable. Of those who took part in the 
six sessions 15 were or had been college presidents, and 
12 were college professors ; on the preliminary commit- 
tees 25 were college presidents and 62 college professors ; 
and of the 60 members of the committees appointed to 
carry out the plans of the new organization, 18 are or 
were college presidents and 13 college professors. The 
influential majority of persons connected with the organi- 
zation consists of eminent educators, whose work is with 
young men and women rather than children. The con- 
stitution is almost identical with the long-tried and proved 
constitution of the National Education Association. 

While in its first call the Sunday School was the most 
prominent factor, the Convention immediately overflowed 
those narrow banks far and wide, like the Jordan in its 
spring floods. 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 187 

Its purpose is very much wider than Sunday School teach- 
ing. It proposes to conduct its work under seventeen de- 
partments, as follows : (1) The Council, (2) Universities 
and Colleges, (3) Theological Seminaries, (4) Churches 
and Pastors, (5) Sunday Schools, (6) Secondary Public 
Schools, (7) Elementary Public Schools, (8) Private 
Schools, (9) Teacher Training, (10) Young Men's and 
Young Women's Christian Associations, (11) Young Peo- 
ple's Societies, (12) The Home, (13) Libraries, (14) The 
Press, (15) Correspondence Instruction, (16) Summer 
Assemblies, (17) Religious Art and Music. 

Its plan is very broad. Its purpose is to "include 
within its cooperation all types of religious thought, all 
schools of criticism, and to give its adhesion to no sect or 
party or institution or geographical section or school of 
criticism." This was wise, for any other course, "in an 
age which demands economy of forces and the prevention 
of waste, and whose religious watchword is federation, 
would be a blunder." 

In September, 1904, there were 1825 members belong- 
ing to 37 denominations, and located in 43 states, 3 ter- 
ritories, the District of Columbia, the Philippine Islands, 
and Hawaii; Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova 
Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec ; Argentina, the British West 
Indies, England, Germany, India, Japan, and Turkey. 

1 . This association stands for a very wide and deep inter- 
est in Bible study, especially in our institutions of learning, 
and for religion as " one of the great permanent, living 
forces that make for individual and social well-being." 

2. It stands for an emphasis on the historic study of 
the Bible, and for the Higher Criticism, but without any 
endorsement of any particular views and results. 



188 THE FRONT LINE 

3. It stands for the sixteen subjects rehearsed above, 
in addition to the Sunday School ; and in this direction 
there is no other organization which includes and corre- 
lates the religious forces connected with so many depart- 
ments of education. 

4. It stands for emphasis on the new psychology, peda- 
gogy, and child study, in their relation to the Sunday 
School, and especially on the grading of the Sunday 
School according to right principles, thus being coordi- 
nated with the International system, though teaching that 
the best way to improve that system is to substitute some- 
thing better in its place. 

5. Its emphasis is more on the theoretical side of Sun- 
day School teaching, the investigation of principles and 
ideals, the larger part of its leading men being practically 
conversant more with the youth of college age. 

6. It has a large, mission in the correlation of the edu- 
cational forces of the time. 

7. It has a wide and noble field as a "clearing-house 
of ideas," an " experiment-station " ; a centre of scientific 
investigation in respect to everything relating to moral 
and religious education. 

It can conduct experiments over a series of years, and 
test the various theories and schemes. It can find enough 
schools which will be willing to be the subject of these 
investigations under their guiding hand, in new schemes 
and old, in modified forms of many kinds for a period 
long enough to ascertain the results, not in one direction 
only, but in many : as to Bible knowledge, as to spiritual 
results, as to the effects on the home and the family, as to 
its influence on the Sunday School in gathering all the 
children of each community into the Sunday School, as 



GROWING INTEREST IK BIBLE STUDY 189 

to the training and preparation of teachers for their work. 
There is no other instrumentality now in existence which 
can as well conduct in a truly scientific spirit these inves- 
tigations and experiments. 

IV. The American Bible League. — Planned several 
years before the R. E. A., but not materializing till the 
year following that organization, — in the spring of 1904, 
— the American Bible League was formed, " not to oppose " 
the work of the R. E. A., but "to place positive, aggres- 
sive, constructive study of the Bible in the path of de- 
structive criticism." It does not stand opposed to the 
" historic spirit " or to Biblical criticism, but to some of 
the results which are given to the public in their name. 
President Patton of Princeton, in his opening address, 
says : — 

" We want criticism, intelligent criticism, of the Bible. 
We can't shut it up in a glass case ; we can't make an 
expurgatorius of books against it. Unless the Bible can 
stand in the daylight, there is no use keeping it in the 
dark, and it ought to go down. We all admit that this 
controversy must be managed by minute experts of the 
Bible on each side. We are willing to submit our case 
to the court, and we expect a verdict." 

Professor Robert Wilson, also of Princeton Theological 
Seminary, spoke as follows : " The only way in which the 
conservative party can maintain its position in the field of 
Biblical criticism is by showing that the premises of the 
radical critics are false ; by showing through the more 
thorough investigation of the facts that the foundations 
upon which the magnificent structures of the critics rest 
are, indeed, groundless, unscientific, and illogical, un- 
proved, and often incapable of proof." 



190 THE FRONT LINE 

The American Bible League stands for the historic 
faith. Every member of the American Bible League is 
required to subscribe to the following : " Believing in the 
divine origin, inspiration, integrity, and supreme author- 
ity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
I desire to become a member of the American Bible 
League." 

" In carrying out our great work we shall meet biblical 
experts of the highest rank with experts of the highest 
rank, and a negative, destructive scholarship with a posi- 
tive, constructive scholarship that, please God, shall win 
the day." 

For this end it will publish a magazine, called the Bible 
Student and Teacher, and a series of Bible League Primers. 
It proposes the organization of branch Leagues in various 
centres, and within them League circles in colleges, schools, 
Christian associations, and in Sunday Schools. 

V. The Bible Teachers Training School, of which Dr. 
Wilbert W. White is the indefatigable originator and 
president, has entered its new and beautiful home on 
Lexington Avenue, New York. It is doing a noble work 
in training teachers in Bible knowledge and thorough 
methods of Bible study. Dr. White is a genius in this 
direction. It publishes the Bible Record for ten months 
in the year, and has for its goal " a Bible Teachers Col- 
lege, which shall open its doors to all who can secure 
enough leisure to study the Bible for three months, for a 
year, for two years. The college must have the most 
eminent scholars, the most aggressive Christian workers, 
the most devout and spiritual assistants upon its teaching 
staff. It must have a library of the best books upon the 
Bible, and upon all phases of its history and influence. It 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 191 

must own the best maps and the best pictures of the 
Orient, in which the Bible was written. It deserves and 
could wisely and profitably use buildings as imposing as 
those in which the Teachers College now does its inspir- 
ing work." 

VI. Extension courses for lay students are given by the 
Union Theological Seminary, New York, under the direc- 
torship of Professor Richard M. Hodge. Courses on Bible 
study and religious education are given at the seminary, 
at the Teachers College, Columbia University, and at 
churches. A syllabus of Religious Education, of Old Tes- 
tament Literature, of The Teaching of Jesus, and of The 
Prophets of Israel, are issued by the department. 

VII. The International Bible Reading Association was 
originated in 1882, and the honorary secretary, Mr. 
Charles Waters, of 56 Old Bailey, London, suggested the 
plan to a committee of the Sunday School Union, and 
ever since has promoted it with unflagging energy and 
enthusiasm. 

The object is to promote the constant use of God's 
Word as a daily companion and guide, through Bible 
reading in the home, by providing a method whereby the 
reading may be rendered intelligent and profitable. It 
also aims to help teachers and scholars in their study 
of the Sunday School lesson. It presents a series of 
daily readings on the subjects of the International 
Lessons. 

Members include all ages and classes without limit, the 
conditions being an intention to read the portions regu- 
larly, and the payment of three cents annual membership 
subscription if connected with a branch, or six cents if 
not. Members are supplied monthly with leaflets con- 



192 THE FRONT LINE 

taining brief " hints " on the daily readings, and quarterly, 
with an illustrated circular letter, which, with circulars, 
etc., amount to more than 12,000,000 a year. There 
were, in 1903, more than 800,000 members in 60 different 
countries. Mr. W. Shaw, Tremont Temple, Boston, is 
one of the honorary secretaries. 

VIII. The Young Men's Christian Associations have a 
Bible study department, in which, according to the last 
annual report, there were 1693 classes. The secretary 
writes me, under date of June 23, that "there are ap- 
proximately 35,000 students in the Bible classes of our 
city, town, and railroad associations, and 25,000 in the 
Bible classes of our Student Associations." 

IX. The Baraca Movement was started at Syracuse, 
New York, in 1890, by Mr. M. H. Hudson, a business man 
of that city, with a class of 18 young men, and the desire 
to bring young men under the influence of Bible study. 
Its platform is " young men at work for young men, all 
standing by the Bible and Bible School." 

"We aim in our organization to make each man feel 
that it's his class, not the property of the teacher. We 
try to arouse a strong class spirit, an enthusiasm for the 
Baraca, and pride in its success." 

The movement has spread rapidly till there are now 
1200 classes, numbering 30,000 members, in every state of 
the Union, in England, and in Canada. And Mr. Hud- 
son writes me that 145 men have joined his Church from 
his class alone. 

Add to these, the American Institute of Sacred Litera- 
ture, centred at the University of Chicago, with branches 
in other cities, publishing books and reaching a large 
number of young people. 



GROWING INTEREST IN BIBLE STUDY 193 

Correspondence Schools, of which that by the American 
Institute of Sacred Literature, and the Moody Institute in 
Chicago, are among the leading ones, are giving training 
courses for Sunday School teachers through instruction 
by correspondence. 

The Christian Endeavor and other Young People's Unions 
and Leagues, with their 2,700,000 young people pledged 
to read the Bible and aided in its study. 

Summer Assemblies, of which there are many all over 
the country. 

Summer Schools for Bible study for ministers and teach- 
ers, held at university centres and at theological semina- 
ries. 

Courses of Lectures on the Bible, such as were given 
Saturday mornings by the Twentieth Century Club of 
Boston to crowded audiences in the Colonial Theatre; be- 
sides lectures, readings, and class lessons in their own 
rooms in the afternoon. 

Courses of Lectures in Individual Churches, and Bible 
Institutes, and great Teachers' Meetings in cities and 
towns. 

All these are but a portion of the organizations working 
for more and better Bible study. 

Now who can look with open eyes upon these signs of a 
fresh and increasing interest in Bible study, which recall the 
great outburst of Bible reading in the times of the Refor- 
mation, both in Germany and England, — and yet talk 
of "the decline of Bible study "! We are reminded of the 
letter Chaplain McCabe once sent to Colonel Ingersoll : — 

"Dear Colonel, — Ten years ago you made the 
following prediction : ; Ten years from this time two 
theatres will be built for one church.' The time is up. 



194 THE FRONT LINE 

The Methodists are now building four churches every 
day, — one every six hours. Please venture upon another 
prediction for the year." 

"Lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; 
The saints triumphant rise in bright array ; 
The King of Glory passes on His way! 
From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, 
Thro' gates of pearl streams in the countless host, 
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
« Hallelujah 1'" 



IX 

METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

There is one best purpose in studying the Bible, the 
one for which John wrote his Gospel, — "that ye may 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and 
that believing ye may have life in His name." But there 
is not one best way of studying the Bible ; there are many 
best ways, all of them aids in reaching the supreme end ; 
just as there are many ways of studying nature, — the 
scientist's way, the poet's way, the artist's way, the 
farmer's way, and the way "that leads through nature up 
to nature's God." There is a tendency for each age to have 
its own favorite way, and to claim that it is the way, the 
best way ; like the different animals in Professor Amos R. 
Wells's bright fable of their convention to choose a king: 

" They held a great meeting a king to select, 

And the kangaroo rose in a dignified way, 
And said, ' I'm the one you should surely elect, 

For I can outleap every beast here to-day.' 
Said the eagle, < How high can you climb toward the sky?' 

Said the nightingale, ' Favor us, please, with a song ! ' 
Said the hawk, ' Let us measure our powers of eye ! ' 

Said the lion, ' Come, wrestle, and prove you are strong ! ' 
But the kangaroo said, ' It would surely be best, 
In our choice of a king, to make leaping the test ! ' " 

So each method of Bible study presents its claim, One 
can do this ; another can do that. One says, Mine is the 

195 



196 THE FRONT LINE 

royal way of studying the Bible ; another declares, Mine 
is the " open sesame " to the divine treasure-house. But 
many methods are good. They are all kings, all " open 
sesames." Each one contributes its share to the knowl- 
edge and power of the Word. Each one has its share in 
building the spiritual temple. And the temple can be 
perfected only by the correlation and mutual help of all. 

Part I 

THE HISTORIC METHOD OF BIBLE STUDY AND THE 
HIGHER CRITICISM 

Although this method is old, and is in some form used 
by all .scholars, yet within a few years its newer -forms 
and proclaimed results have been brought into such 
prominence in this country, accepted by so many, opposed 
by so many, explained in learned volumes, exploited in 
popular literature, taught in the colleges, so urged or con- 
demned in public and in private, that they have knocked 
at the door of the Sunday School. And the question 
must be decided by Sunday School teachers, — what shall 
be their attitude towards the historic study of the Bible 
and its daughter the Higher Criticism, and what use can 
they make of it in teaching their classes ? 

Not many years ago in the town of Hamath in Northern 
Syria was discovered a sacred stone with Hittite inscrip- 
tions throwing light upon that ancient race referred to in 
Genesis, but for many centuries unknown to history, inso- 
much that many believed that the Bible story of the Hittites 
was legendary. This stone was with great difficulty pur- 
chased for a museum, and was being carted away to the 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 197 

Euphrates to be shipped, when there occurred an unusual 
display of November meteors. This frightened the people 
of Hamath ; they thought that God was angry with them 
for selling the sacred stone, and that he was throwing the 
stars about in his wrath. They sent a deputation after 
the stone and demanded its return. The old Turk who 
had it in charge, after a long conference, told them that 
they had completely misunderstood the meaning of the 
falling stars; that so far from expressing God's anger, 
they meant, on the contrary, that God was so glad on 
account of their self-denial in yielding the stone to 
science that he was setting off fireworks in heaven for 

joy- 

This is a pretty fair picture of the present situation in 
regard to the Higher Criticism. Men of the more moder- 
ate, constructive, and devotional school of the higher 
critics, of which Professor George Adam Smith is a fair 
representative, believe most sincerely that they are doing 
a great service to God and to the Bible. They believe 
that they have removed what Goldwin Smith calls " Chris- 
tianity's millstone, fertile in casuistry, bigotry, and cruel 
oppression " ; that they have saved many from the disas- 
ter of being unable to reconcile a belief in the goodness 
of God with what they term " the rigorous laws," " the 
pitiless tempers," and " the atrocities which are narrated 
by the Old Testament histories, and sanctioned by its 
laws." 

Professor George Adam Smith says : " I know no sad- 
der tragedy than this innumerably repeated one, nor any 
service which it were better worth doing than the attempt 
to help men out of its perplexities. The most advanced 
modern criticism provides grounds for the proof of a 



198 THE FRONT LINE 

Divine Revelation in the Old Testament at least more 
firm than those on which the older apologetic used to 
rely." Professor Budde, one of the most eminent of 
German critics, writes to Professor Smith that as for 
himself his " belief in a genuine revelation of God in 
the Old Testament remains rock-fast." Even Professor 
Cheyne protests that " Our ambition as interpreters is 
nothing less than to get to the heart of the Old Testa- 
ment ; . . . that our critical freedom is not the freedom 
of scepticism, but of a purified faith ; . . . that faith, as 
the Oxford of to-day knows full well, is the jewel of the 
soul alike to the critic and to the simple-minded Chris- 
tian." 

I quote these words of the higher critics, not as endors- 
ing all the results to which they have come in respect to 
the Bible, for I differ decidedly from many of their views, 
but that all may recognize them not only as great schol- 
ars but as devoted Christian men of deep piety and rever- 
ence for the Scriptures, as earnest seekers after the truth, 
and fellow-laborers for the coming of the Kingdom of God ; 
in order that all personalities may be eliminated, and the 
only questions with all shall be, What is true ? and What 
is the best way to promote the study and the influence of 
the Word of God? 

But when the results claimed by even the moderate 
higher critics are plainly stated, they strike the ordinary 
believer in the truth of the Bible with a shock. There is 
a strong feeling that many of the claimed results are not 
true, that the critics' " reasoning can be shown to be un- 
scientific and misleading ; that, almost without limit, they 
assume, as fundamental facts, things which are not facts, 
but theories." And that even their theories may be 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 199 

wrong; that of possible conjectures and inferences from 
facts they have chosen certain ones from among others 
equally good and treated them as facts. Indeed, most of 
the contradictions spoken of are not in the Bible as it 
stands, but are created by the working theories of the 
critics, who bid us " beware of the siren voice of the har- 
monizer." And the scheme seems to be full of inferences, 
which are not borne out as necessarily true by well-known 
facts in life, in literature, and in history, which can be 
tested, and where " the voice of the harmonizer " must be 
heard. 

By the prevalent school of higher critics, the earlier 
books of the Bible are not regarded as true history, but 
as a "framework woven from the raw material of myth 
and legend," as " an Epic of Humanity." 1 

1 They say that " on the present evidence it is impossible to be sure of 
more than that." 

"The narratives of the patriarchs contain a substratum of actual per- 
sonal history." The transactions between individuals, such as Jacob, 
Esau, Israel, may often most naturally be explained as transactions 
between tribes. The first chapter of Genesis is not a revelation but a 
poem or legend. All have been written at a late date, and are "full 
of conceptions of a later date." 

According to Professor Driver, in the words of the Sunday School 
Times, "it is an essential and inseparable part of the theory advocated 
in his volumes that the earlier strata of the history recorded in the Old 
Testament are a mixture of fact and legend, while in the later strata 
the history has been systematically falsified, either through ignorance 
or with the intent to deceive, in the interest of the political and religious 
opinions of their authors. This applies, not to the books of Chronicles 
alone, but to every part of the Old Testament that contains statements of 
historical fact. And this theoretical presupposition is consistently ac- 
companied by the practical habit of finding contradictions and other 
incredible statements everywhere, even at the cost of forced and unnatural 
interpretation." 

Jehovah, according to their theory, was a tribal God at first, and 



200 THE FRONT LINE 

Now it is not strange that not only the general body of 
Christians, but scholars equal in scholarship to these 
others, familiar with the historic study of the Bible, with 
minds equally open to receive light from all sources, should 
feel that these teachings are undermining the very foun- 
dations of belief in God's Word ; that much power is lost, 
that the glory of divine revelation is dimmed, and that 
these views have been the means of undermining the 
faith of some in the Word of God, as even Professor 
Nash in his History of the Higher Criticism sorrowfully 
acknowledges, though he believes that their faith in 
the end will be built on a rock-foundation instead of on 
sand. 

Professor Marvin R. Vincent, in a little brochure called 
That Monster The Higher Critic, illustrates one aspect of 
the popular attitude toward biblical criticism by the 
" story of a wag who laid a wager that he would break 
up a country menagerie and circus. Accordingly, when 
the rustic crowd had duly inspected the elephant and the 
hyenas, and were seated round the arena eagerly await- 
ing the entrance of the clown and the bareback rider, he 
rushed into the ring, waving his hat, and shouting : — ■ 

" ' Ladies and gentlemen, save yourselves ! The Gyas- 
cutus has broke loose ! ! ' 

" Dire was the panic that followed ; numerous the bruises 
and scratches ; appalling the damage to bonnets and drap- 
eries ; but the tent was emptied at last, and the farmers 
and their wives and daughters were jogging homeward 

monotheism was a late evolution from polytheism, through the inspi- 
ration of God, which transfigured the legends, myths, and traditions, 
and made them the medium of teaching the great truths of Divine Reve- 
lation. The whole structure of the Old Testament is changed. 



METHODS OF BIBLE ST[JDY 201 

and congratulating each other on their escape, when it 
occurred to some of them to ask, 'What is a gyascutus, 
anyway ? ' 2 

" Upon the settled faith and tranquil content of a large 
body of Christians breaks the cry, ' The higher criticism 
has broken loose ! ' It is charging, head on, with smoking 
nostrils, against the Bible ! It means destruction to the 
faith once delivered to the saints. 

" Meanwhile few stop to ask, 4 What is higher criticism, 
anyway ? ' The majority run ; that is, they evade the 
question with some such irrelevant platitude as ' The old 
Bible is good enough for me.' " 

Now, there is no panic in the Church about the Higher 
Criticism. But there is a hesitation about receiving 
such revolutionary ideas, without the most positive proof. 
There is a questioning whether " the present is but a new 
gust of the old tempest." There is a determination to 
wait awhile, in a time when dead theories, scientific far 
more even than theological, are strewn thick along the 
path of Progress. 

There is an intention to search out the truth by equal 
scholarship, equal scientific research, equally open minds, 
and learn whether there may not be found truer inferences 
from the facts, a wider horizon, an interpretation which 
will embody the good, and avoid the dangers, of both 
views. In a word, whether the Higher Criticism is an 
imaginary monster, or an angel with healing in his 

1 Professor Vincent does not tell us what a Gyascutus is, but the Cen- 
tury Dictionary says that it is either a beetle about an inch long, or an 
imaginary animal of tremendous size, with two short legs on one side and 
two long ones on the other, adapted to feeding on the side of a very steep 
mountain. Compare Poe's story of the Sphynx. 



202 THE FRONT LINE 

wings; or whether there will emerge a human saint, 
better adapted than an angel to be the divine instrument 
in transforming the world into the Kingdom of God. 
For the particular theories of which we have been speak- 
ing are but a small part of the work the Higher Criticism 
is doing. 

Thus the present situation reminds us of the gathering 
to celebrate the laying of the foundations of the new 
Temple by the returned exiles from Babylon, when 

" All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the 
Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 

" But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who 
were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation 
of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice ; and 
many shouted aloud for joy : 

" So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy 
from the noise of the weeping of the people." 

Then the prophet Haggai came upon the scene, and 
cheered both parties by foretelling that though the new 
Temple was far inferior to the old, yet in some way, un- 
realized by either party and inconceivable at the time, by 
unexpected changes, " The glory of this latter house shall 
be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts : and 
in this place tvill I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.''' 

Thinking of " dogma " not as one of the great doctrines 
which never die, but rather as an opinion or theory about 
them, we would join with John Hooker : — 

" A worn-out Dogma died ; around its bed 
Its votaries wept as if all Truth were dead. 
But heaven-born Truth is an immortal thing ; 
Hark how its lieges give it welcoming : 
' The King is dead — long live the King ! ' " 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 203 

Now the teacher who has come in contact with the 
modern views cannot be indifferent as to which school 
is right, and how far each is right. By his birthright as 
a Christian he wants the truth, " though the sky should 
fall, sun, moon, and stars and all." In no case is there 
danger that the Bible will be destroyed, however much 
individuals may suffer. ■ Divine Revelation will not be 
taken away. Not one of the great truths of the Gospel, 
their form of statement purified and brightened by the 
conflicts of the ages, will perish. Either the theories will 
die, or they will be modified into some helpful form. 

And yet it does make a difference which view one takes 
in teaching the Old Testament. 

On the one hand, he will have an easy way to avoid 
some moral difficulties, which can be as easily avoided in 
more natural ways, but, on the other, he loses no small 
power in his teaching. 

A divine revelation, based on the spiritual illumination 
of legend and myth, cannot have the same power or give 
the same assurance of faith as one based on actual history 
and biographic fact. 

It may be true that " if we realize that the Bible is the 
story of the lives of men who were groping after God, 
wishing to find God, trying to understand God, and com- 
ing in various degrees to knowledge of Him and fellowship 
with Him, he will find many, if not most, of his difficulties 
about the interpretation of the Bible removed." But it 
does make a vast difference whether the story is true or 
not. The deeds, the victories, of an imaginary character 
cannot have the same moral force in character-building 
nor the same power over the conscience as the same deeds 
of faith and heroism and self-sacrifice actually wrought by 



w 

204 THE FRONT LINE 

real men like ourselves, and therefore possible to us, and 
imperative upon us. 

The victory of Jack the Giant Killer has no such moral 
power over a child as David's faith-victory over Goliath. 
Shakespeare's immortal characters have power just as far 
as we recognize them as true to actual life. Not one of 
them can touch the true Bible stories in character-building 
power. Jesus Christ as a mere idealized man, a picture 
of the imagination, could never have even begun to do 
what the real Christ, the Son of God, actually coming 
from heaven as bearer of good tidings from God, and 
actually giving His life in loving atonement for the sins 
of man, has wrought in this world. A " human Christ " 
has always been a failure. A providential guidance of 
persons or of nations shown in a history that is largely 
legendary, although "immortal with truthfulness to the 
realities of human nature and of God's education of 
mankind," cannot have the teaching power of a true 
story of the actual education of mankind wrought out 
by God. 

Professor George Adam Smith says that Butler, Foster, 
Maurice, Kingsley, Newman, Robertson of Brighton, 
Candlish, Arnot, Spurgeon, and Beecher have all used 
the Old Testament chiefly for its characters. It was not 
the miracles of Old Testament history nor the national 
events upon which the preaching of our fathers fed and 
grew strong, but the personal elements ; the development 
of character, the moral struggles, checks, catastrophes, 
and recoveries in which so many of the books of the Old 
Testament are so very rich. That is true. But all these 
great preachers presented those characters as having actu- 
ally lived, as does the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 205 

the names in his catalogue of the immortal heroes of 
faith. The beautiful legends of the Knights of the Round 
Table, the hero-tales of The Light of Asia, the Sagas of the 
Norsemen, helpful and uplifting as they are, never had, 
and never can have, such power as the heroic deeds of 
actual men of like passions with ourselves. 

Now what course shall Sunday School teachers take 
under these circumstances? Remember that I am not 
speaking to specially prepared teachers of adult classes, 
who rightfully discuss more fully these questions. Nor 
am I speaking to or for expert scholars, lifelong students 
of the Bible, professors and scientific investigators. God 
speed them in their work. It is not for me to imagine 
myself competent to offer any advice or suggestion to 
such men, whom I admire and love. But it may be right 
for me to give the results of many years of study and 
thought and reading and experience to the average teacher 
in the Sunday School. 

1. Avoid all personalities and all slurs upon those who 
differ from you, and especially all bitter attacks on that 
which is not fully understood. There is nothing which 
hurts a cause more than to pour hot shot into a man of 
straw, imagining and representing it to be the enemy, 
who, meanwhile, looks on in safety and smiles. I once 
heard Henry Ward Beecher, during his great trial, relate 
in self-defence at one of his prayer meetings how he and 
his friend were mobbed at an anti-slavery meeting in 
New York. He escaped through a back entrance, but 
the mob followed him, and, thinking him in a certain 
house, attacked it with stones, rotten eggs, and all man- 
ner of missiles. But Mr. Beecher was in the opposite 
house, and looked upon the attack with smiling cheer- 



206 THE FKONT LINE 

fulness. " It did me no harm," he said, " for I wasn't 
there." 

Nor is it wise for any one to expose himself to the 
retort which that bright book Collections and Recollections 
says that an English bishop made to a man who boasted 
that "he had only contempt for Aristotle." " One thing 
is certain," retorted the bishop, "it is not the kind of 
contempt which familiarity breeds." 

2. Be receptive, open-minded to all truth from every 
source, let all the windows of your soul be open in every 
direction. The bee sucks honey from every flower, even 
the poisonous ones. Learn wisdom from your enemies as 
well as your friends, for they may point out something 
you would otherwise fail to see. There is no impassable 
barrier between the divergent views. There is no case 
where "one is infallible and the other always right." 

Jean Ingelow in one of her later poems, The Monitions 
of the Unseen, pictures a faithful and earnest young min- 
ister, who became utterly discouraged at the seeming fail- 
ure of his work for the poor and suffering. One day he 
had a vision which revealed to him the cause of his 
failure. He had acted upon the theory that the whole 
world was sharply divided into two distinct classes, — on 
the one hand those that helped, on the other those who 
needed help, while, as a matter of fact, all needed to help 
and all needed to be helped. 

To imagine that there is a sharp division, as some have 
claimed, between the more conservative and the more 
radical school, that there is no " perfect day in June " be- 
tween arctic winter and tropic summer is simply to invite 
failure, and to defy facts. 

Every one needs for his spiritual vision the magical 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 207 

qualities of Mr. Titbottom's Spectacles described in 
Prue and I. When their owner looked through these 
glasses at people, he ceased to see them as they ordina- 
rily appeared on the street; he saw their real essential 
character. Wonderful were the revelations that were 
made. 1 

Blessed are those who see with such vision the truths 
that lie hidden beneath unfavorable circumstances; who 
take the Court witnesses' oath, and see "the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth." 

3. Distinguish between the Historic Method and the 
things which various persons claim as the results of the 
Method. As a matter of fact the ideas which usually pres- 
ent themselves to the mind when the Higher Criticism is 
mentioned are really but a portion of what the Higher 
Criticism has done for the study of the Bible. 

The Historic method has come to stay, rather in some 
measure it has always been with us, because it is a right 
method, full of enlightening results. 

When Madame Roland stood upon the guillotine in 

1 He looked at one man and saw nothing but a ledger. Another was 
simply a billiard cue, another a bank bill, another a great hog, or a 
wolf, or a vulgar fraction. On the other hand, he saw the good that 
others failed to see. One of his school teachers was a deep well of living 
water in which he saw the stars. Another was a tropical garden full of 
fruits and flowers. In one woman's heart lay concealed in the depth of 
character great excellences like pearls at the bottom of the sea, little sus- 
pected by most, but perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by 
one person. Another, called an old maid, was a white lily, fresh, luminous, 
and fragrant still. Another's nature was a tropic in which the sun shone, 
and birds sang, and flowers bloomed forever. His wrinkled grandmother 
appeared as a Madonna, " and I have yet heard of no queen, no belle, no 
imperial beauty whom in grace, and brilliancy, and persuasive courtesy 
she might not have surpassed." 



208 THE FRONT LINE 

what is now the Place de la Concorde in Paris, she looked 
at the statue of Liberty, which stood where now stands 
the Egyptian Obelisk, and exclaimed, " Oh, Liberty, how 
many crimes have been committed in thy name! " Then 
the axe fell, and another crime was committed in the name 
of Liberty. But Liberty is just as sweet and precious, to 
be longed for and fought for, as if no crimes had been 
committed in her name. 

So the Historic method is just as good, as helpful, as 
enlightening, as if no mistake, no false inference, had been 
made in its name. 

Some wise writer warns us " not to throw away the baby 
with the water in which it has been washed." 

To me the new emphasis on the Historic method has 
been a real blessing. The words and messages receive a 
new meaning from their historic setting. The books of 
the prophets have a new meaning when we read them not 
as isolated themes, but as sermons and orations spoken in 
times of great need in order to accomplish great purposes. 
Every far outlook into the future shines clearer on account 
of its setting in the present, and becomes more full of 
instruction for all lands, and of hope for all time. Proph- 
ecy is thus seen to be, in the words of the late Professor 
Davidson, " the philosophy of history. Prophecy is his- 
tory become conscious, history expressing its own mean- 
ing. But prophecy is not the philosophy of ordinary, but 
of Jewish history. Now Jewish history consisted of two 
factors, — human activity, as in ordinary history, and a 
supernatural divine guidance ; and therefore prophecy 
must partake of two factors also, human insight and 
divine illumination." 

In like manner the epistles are transfigured with fresh 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 209 

meaning. The history, on the other hand, is made more 
clear, more vivid, more instructive by means of the proph- 
ets and epistles. The whole Bible is thus made more ef- 
fective for teaching, and more attractive to young and old. 

4. The Sunday School teacher should dwell in the 
atmosphere of the devotional, character-forming, life- 
guiding elements of the Scripture. All teachers, higher 
critics or not, advocate this. There are just as distinct 
atmospheres of Bible study as there are in families and 
churches, which form the most important part of their 
influence over others. 

Every one recognizes that there are distinct atmospheres 
in the study of literature. The discussion of the questions 
whether Bacon or Shakespeare wrote the dramas attrib- 
uted to Shakespeare; whether one author or many wrote 
the Iliad or the tales gradually grew, and were moulded 
into their present form by the genius of Homer, or whether 
the author was Homer or another man by the name of 
Homer, as some critics claim that the Gospel of John was 
not written by the apostle John, but by another man by 
the name of John — all these and similar discussions 
belong to an entirely different literary atmosphere from 
that created by the study of Homer and Shakespeare as 
literature. 

So in Bible study there are several distinct atmospheres 
— an atmosphere of criticism, a literary atmosphere, a de- 
votional atmosphere, an atmosphere of conscience and of 
right living. " A work of art is an object seen through 
a temperament," says some one. Our view of the Bible 
is usually seen through a temperament. No one really 
understands the positions of the higher critics till he has 
dwelt in their atmosphere for a time. There is a literary 



210 THE FRONT LINE . 

atmosphere as unrecognized by many as the bright skies 
beyond the clouds. There is an atmosphere that belongs 
to the religious life, inspiring, invigorating, converting, 
transforming. 

And as this is the influential atmosphere of the teacher's 
own life, of every Christian's life, as it is that in which the 
main work of the Sunday School as of the church is to be 
done, it is necessary that the Sunday School teacher should 
live and move and have his being there ; while he visits 
and explores the others as thoroughly as possible chiefly 
that he may clarify, invigorate, make life-giving the 
atmosphere in which he teaches and lives. 

I once asked an agent of the Tiffanys why they, with 
all their skill and modern inventions, did not put into 
their windows such beautiful colors as we find in some of 
the old cathedrals, the glory of which, when once seen, 
will never fade from the memory. He said that only age 
could give such charm to the colors ; that the dust was 
an inch thick on some of these windows. An English 
rector desiring to renovate his church had the dust 
cleaned from its windows, with the result that the tone 
of their beauty was ruined. 

There are some great essential truths, tried and tested 
by centuries of experience, to which the dust of the ages 
gives beauty and power, and however we change, the 
philosophy which underlies them, and the words in which 
they are expressed are as fixed and eternal as the soul 
which outlasts the stars. 

The atmosphere of these is the atmosphere of the 
Sunday School. 

5. The teacher should recognize that many of the results 
claimed as settled with a certain unanimity by one school 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 211 

of the higher critics are still under fire. The conflict of 
ideas, u the battle of the books," is not ended. 1 There 
are questions on each side that have not yet been an- 
swered by the other. There are difficulties not yet 
solved. New books are coming out every year. One of 
the best and best known of all the higher critics said to 
me not long ago that it was only the second-rate critics 
who were so infallibly sure ; and another agreed with me 
when in a discussion I said that no one could possibly tell 
just what position would be taken ten years from now, or 
what new light might rise above the horizon. 

It is repeatedly said that we ought not to teach the 
children as true those things they will have to unlearn ten 
years later. Exactly. But it is well to be sure what 
things, traditional or critical, will not change in ten years. 
Teach what you believe to be true and adapted to the 
children's needs. But do not teach as true what is doubt- 
ful, nor as settled what is still in the conflict. Whatever 
you teach on some of these questions will be likely to 
meet with some changes in ten years ; but that will not 
injure the children of the present any more than similar 

1 Professor Robert W. Rogers, the Assyriologist, speaking of Professor 
Delitzsch's Babel und Bibel writes from Berlin: "To those who are 
unable to keep close watch upon German thought it would be impossible 
to imagine the effect produced by these two lectures. The first lecture 
contained only thirty pages, the second but twenty-nine. In reply to 
these brief papers there had appeared up to a few weeks ago (May, 1904) 
no less than one thousand three hundred and fifty small articles, more 
than three hundred lengthy papers and twenty-eight brochures, some big 
enough to be reckoned as books, and this in Germany alone. In addition 
to these, all of which were more or less valuable, there were published 
many thousands of worthless performances. Let this stand as a proof of 
the undying, unconquerable interest in the Bible. Let one man attack it, 
and thousands spring to its defence." 



212 THE FRONT LINE 

changes have harmed the vigorous generations of the 
past. 

The conflict of argument and discussion is sure to bring 
out more clearly the real truth, differing from what either 
side argued for, or expected. When Gareth of the Knights 
of the Round Table met what seemed to him the last 
enemy of humanity and " Through the dim dawn advanced 
the monster," and with one mighty stroke the Knight split 
his skull, out there 

" Issued the bright face of a blooming boy 
Fresh as a flower new born." 

So Tennyson, in The Ancient Sage, declares that faith 

" Reels not in the storm of warring words, 
She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and ' No,' 
She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst, 
She feels the sun is hid but for a night, 
She spies the summer through the winter bud, 
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, 
She hears the lark within the songless egg, 
She finds the fountain where they wailed ' mirage.' " 

The history of the progress of the church has been the 
history of conflicts and discussions. In times of quiet, 
the quiet of indifference, of neglect, of coldness, or of 
compulsory unity, — the great doctrines, the institutions, 
the teachings of the Bible have a tendency to attach to 
themselves various accretions and imperfections derived 
from their secular surroundings, from the sciences and 
philosophies of the day, and from the moral practices and 
trends of the times, like the Sabbath rules of the Pharisees 
in the time of Christ. For the " warfare of science with 
theology" is at heart chiefly the warfare of new science with 
old science, and new philosophies with old philosophies. 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 213 

Plato's description of the soul as like the marine Glaucus 
who cast himself into the sea, and cruised along the shores 
with the whales, is not an altogether unfair picture of 
many of the Christian teachings and practices as seen in 
past ages. " His ancient nature cannot be easily perceived, 
because the ancient members of his body are partly 
broken off, and others worn away ; and besides this, other 
things are grown to him, such as shellfish, and seaweeds, 
and stones." It is by conflict, by discussion, by criticism, 
that the doctrines and the institutions of the church, yea, 
even the soul itself, become freed from their imperfections 
and false accretions, and stand before the world in their 
true nature. 

" Agitation," said Wendell Phillips, "is not a disease 
nor a medicine ; it is the normal state of a nation. . . . 
Agitation is not the cure, but the diet of a free people ; 
not the homeopathic or allopathic dose to which a sick land 
has recourse, but the daily cold water and the simple bread, 
the daily diet and absolute necessity, the manna of a peo- 
ple wandering in the wilderness. ... If the Alps, piled 
in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of despotism, 
the ever restless ocean is ours, which, girt within the 
eternal laws of gravitation, is pure only because never 
still." 

Freedom of discussion is the atmosphere wherein truth 
thrives with vigor and gains its victories. " To sit on 
the safety valve is simply to invite an explosion." Or as 
Lord Rosebery once said, "You cannot prevent a storm 
by sitting on the barometer." Professor Rogers rightly 
holds that " Protestantism owes its very existence and 
certainly its dominating power among men to its abso- 
lutely untrammelled study and exposition of the Scrip- 



214 THE FRONT LINE 

tures. True Protestantism has never feared scholarship 
and never will. If scholarship has attacked its Bible, it 
has in the next moment supplied for it a new and better 
defence. . . . The brilliant and learned De Tocqueville 
used to say that 'the cure for the evils of democracy is 
more democracy,' and we say here that the cure for the evils 
of this new Assyriology is more Assyriology." And the 
remedy for any errors of scholarship is more scholarship. 

" The only method," says Professor William M. Ramsay, 
u is to hold fast to the scientific principle, and to walk 
along the narrow path between dangers and uncertainties 
on either hand as unswervingly and unhesitatingly as does 
the pious Mohammedan across Al-Sirat, which bridges 
with its spider-thread breadth the chasm between him and 
heaven." 

I do not know what form the resultant of the divergent 
views will take, but I believe that the trend will be in the 
following direction. 

1. That the Biblical order will be found to be the true 
order ; that as the divine revelation of God as Creator, 
and of a day set apart for His worship stands at the 
beginning of the Bible, so it stood at the beginning of 
the human race ; that polytheism is a degeneration from 
monotheism, and not monotheism an evolution from poly- 
theism ; that the Babylonian stories are polytheistic de- 
generations from a divine revelation, and not revelation 
a transfigured Babylonian legend. 

Professor Rogers, in a late article on the New Assyri- 
ology, speaking of the Flood stories, writes, " Is the He- 
brew narrative borrowed from the Babylonian story ? So 
many think. But the facts before us seem to demand 
another explanation." 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 215 

Professor Delitzsch states in his Babel und Bibel that 
monotheism existed in early Babylonia, and that one of 
the Babylonian gods was Jahve, the Hebrew Jehovah. 

2. The history of mankind has been the history of an 
evolution or development, with God in it all and behind it 
all. If early men were savages in outward culture and 
knowledge, they were at least "savages in training for 
angels," and in training by God their heavenly Father. 

Evolution does not exclude God's personal action in 
providence or in miracle. In connection with a discus- 
sion on this point I asked a most distinguished professor 
of biology if the introduction of the personal will of 
Darwin in the evolution of doves, or the personal will of 
breeders in the swift evolution of better horses, or of gar- 
deners in the evolution of fruits and flowers, was contrary 
to the doctrine of evolution. He replied that it was not. 

Then I asked, Is the teaching that God has in the past, 
or does now, put his personal will into the evolution of 
the world and of man, exactly as his children are doing 
every day in their small way, — would this be contrary to 
scientific evolution ? The reply was, Not at all. 

This is the way we read the biblical story of mankind. 
It is the story of an evolution according to God's own 
laws always acting, but with an occasional putting of his 
personal will into the chain of events, and doing what 
would not have come to pass without that intervention 
and change. This seems to me the only tenable definition 
of a miracle. And I cannot see how in any other way 
God can make himself known as a personal God above 
nature, as a father more real and helpful than any earthly 
father, except in this Bible way ; nor prove that the picture 
is false which is described in Zola's Le Bete Humaine of a 



216 THE FRONT LINE 

railway train dragged by an engine whose driver has been 
killed, dashing at headlong speed into the midnight. " The 
train is the world, we are the freight, fate is the track, 
death is the darkness, God is the engineer, — who is 
dead," 

3. This evolution, recorded in the Old Testament history, 
up to the time of Christ, is of the same kind as has been the 
evolution of the race since the time of Christ, and as the 
evolution of every child, which, according to a favorite 
and doubtless true theory, is a repetition of the evolution 
of the race. 

What is this kind of evolution ? 

The child does not evolve the ideas and the ideals 
toward which he is being trained. They are taught him 
from without, and then, by a long series of struggles, of 
ups and downs, of errors and failures, of new light and new 
powers, he grows up toward the ideas and ideals, and also 
toward the capacity of receiving further revelations and 
higher ideals. 

Of the same kind has been the evolution of the Kingdom 
of Christ. Christians did not evolve the Gospels, nor an 
ideal Christ, by slow growth of mind and character. The 
whole evolution of Christianity has been under a revela- 
tion from heaven of the highest truths, of a perfect char- 
acter in Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It 
began with a divine revelation of God and His commands. 
New revelations were given in special eras. New under- 
standing of the treasures of the revelation came to men 
as they were able to receive it ; just as there have come 
from the Book of Nature — ever the same, always full of 
unexplored regions and undeveloped resources — a gradual 
revelation of its powers and glories, of which even we in 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 217 

the twentieth century have received but a few drops from 
its mighty ocean. 

Its history has been one of conflicts, of slow growth, of 
strange errors, of reactions, of contradictions in practice 
of some of the essential principles of the Gospel, of losing 
or marring parts of the truth and of recovering it again 
as if freshly revealed, of a zigzag progress often running 
to extremes in some directions and then in others. 

At the same time, its history has been one of continued 
general progress toward the ideals of the Gospel. Great 
prophets and preachers have arisen to condemn the errors 
and bring back the people to the Gospel ; and great 
religious poets like David and his successors, who have 
cherished the deepest spiritual life. There have been great 
revivals, marvellous victories, new impulses to righteous- 
ness, fuller revelations, and clearer views and truer under- 
standing of the old Revelation. 

On the whole, there has been a steady movement toward 
the promised consummation of the Kingdom of God, the 
new heavens and new earth described in the last chapters 
of the Bible. 

I have sometimes represented the evolution by a diagram 
like this : — 



The Divine Ideal 





**»*>* 



„**#&* 



■&&** 



218 THE FRONT LINE 

Now this growth of Christianity, which is plainly seen 
in the history we know, is a very good picture of the 
history of the Jews as related in Old Testament history. 
And this fact renders it probable that the order given in 
that history is the true order of the events themselves. 
It relieves us from most of the difficulties which have led 
the Higher Criticism to rearrange the order of events. 

But we are still in the midst of the discussion, and all 
each one can do is to throw some little ray of light on the 

problems. 

" This day the sound of battle, 

The next the victor's song." 

In the old Greek legend of the founding of Thebes, Cad- 
mus found the appointed site held by a great dragon 
which he must slay before he could build the city. Then 
he took the dragon's teeth and sowed them in the field 
like wheat, when lo, from each one sprang an armed giant. 

" The clods grow warm and crumble where he sows, 
And now the pointed spears advance in rows ; 
Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crests, 
Now the broad shoulders and the rising breasts ; 
O'er all the field the breathing harvest swarms, 
A growing host, a crop of men and arms." 

Cadmus found himself surrounded by a great army of 
fierce and warlike giants. He took a rock and threw it 
among them, striking one of them on the breast. Then 
instead of slaying him they went to fighting one another. 
And they slew one another till only one tall giant re- 
mained, and he became the helper of Cadmus in carrying 
stones for the walls of the hundred-gated city of Thebes. 
So will it be in this present conflict of theories and opin- 
ions. They are slaying one another as in the conflicts of 



METHODS OF BIBLE STUDY 219 

the past. The whole field of the past is strewn thick with 
dead theories and systems and philosophies, scientific, 
educational, religious. But in every period of conflict 
there stands forth after the battle some truth purer, 
clearer, shining down the ages like a " beautiful tall angel " 
warrior, with a spear like that of Milton's Ithuriel which 
revealed the true nature of what it touched; and this 
resultant truth will now, as in the past, help to build the 
jasper-walled City of God. 



CHAPTER X 

BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Part II 

VARIOUS METHODS 

I. Reading the Bible through in Course. — Mr. Pyeroft, 
in his work on how to read English history, advises his 
readers to gain first an outline or skeleton view of the 
whole course of the history, and to learn it by heart. 
Then every reference to the history, in book or current 
literature, and every study of details will immediately 
find their places in the progress of events, and gradually 
build up a well-balanced knowledge of the history ; while 
otherwise a large portion of one's reading and study will 
be almost wasted as disconnected fragments, and have 
little part in one's intellectual equipment. 

This principle is equally true of Bible study. The first 
thing to be done, and it should be begun in childhood, is 
to read the Bible through from beginning to end, and to 
repeat this course all through life in order to keep it in 
the memory ; and then to learn by heart an outline of the 
course of history as a concrete whole. 

The result will be that all other forms of Bible study 
will have a double value. All references to the Bible in 
literature will find their place in the Bible history, recall 
and illuminate it along its whole course. For literature 

220 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 221 

is full of the Bible. Shakespeare alone has more than 
five hundred and fifty quotations, allusions, or senti- 
ments from the Bible ; Tennyson has four hundred and 
sixty ; and Farrar says that " the hundred best books, the 
hundred best pictures, the hundred greatest strains of 
music are all in it, and all derived from it." 

" And, weary seekers of the best, 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the book our mothers read." 

So that whosoever is able to locate these, and all the 
daily references to the Bible in magazines, papers, con- 
versations, will in time have an illuminated Bible. 

The value of this movement through the Scriptures is 
well illustrated by President Slocum's words to the vis- 
itors at the great St. Louis Fair : " Much may justly be 
said of the unwisdom of superficial work in sight-seeing, 
as well as in the class room and laboratory, and there is 
danger of thinking ; a ramble through a World's Fair is 
an equivalent for a liberal education.' But too much 
emphasis cannot be laid on the value of such a ramble to 
the open-eyed and open-souled thousands who have waited 
for this event to gain their first vital knowledge of the 
way other workers do their work." 

It is only by a knowledge of the whole Bible, a knowl- 
edge possible to every one, that the teacher can do his 
best work. He cannot teach any lesson well unless he 
regards it as part of a great whole ; not as a single note, 
though sweet as an angel's voice, but as a part of an 
anthem ; not as a single stone, but as part of a temple ; 
and unless he can say with George Herbert, — 



222 THE FRONT LINE 

" Oh, that I knew how all thy lights combine 
And the configurations of their storie, 
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, 
But all the constellations in their glorie." 

The teacher, too, without a knowledge of the whole 
Bible, will miss many an illustration and suggestion which 
would impress the truth; and as one whose work is to 
cure souls, he will be like one in an apothecary shop 
wherein are medicines for every disease, who yet does not 
know what is in it or where to find the remedy he needs. 

II. The Literary Study of the Bible. — Professor Rich- 
ard Moulton, of Oxford and Chicago Universities, has 
made all Bible readers his debtors by pressing upon their 
notice the great number of literary forms in which the 
Bible truths are expressed, including every known form 
of literature, by showing their effect upon its interpreta- 
tion, and by his genius in applying his wide knowledge 
of literature to our English Bible. 

Almost equally with the modern expansion of the 
historic method has the literary study of the Bible, as 
Professor Moulton has presented it in his books, in the 
introductions and arrangements in his Modern Reader s 
Bible, and most expressively of all in his spoken lectures, 
been to me almost a new revelation. 

Consider the variety of literary form in our Bible, — 
history, story, biography, autobiography, arguments, ora- 
tions, sermons, conversations, poetry in lyric, dramatic, 
idyllic, and epic forms, hymns, songs, epistles, parables, 
proverbs, fables, enigmas, metaphors, hyperboles, epigrams. 
These, written by all classes and conditions of men, are 
adapted to all conditions and all ages, to all classes of 
mind, all degrees of culture. They meet every need. 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 223 

Moreover, we often have to consider the form of the 
literature before we can, in many cases, determine the 
meaning and application. 

Every great essential doctrine of the Bible is presented 
to us in a variety of literary forms, — in prose statement, 
in story, in parable, in poetry, in dramatic presentation, 
in symbol, in metaphor, and especially in history and biog- 
raphy as actually lived out by men and nations. And 
this is necessary in order to guard against mistaken in- 
terpretations, errors, and half truths, which are sure to 
arise from any single presentation. That Massachusetts 
governor who quoted Satan's words in Job as divine 
truth, would never have done so if he had realized that 
the book of Job was a dramatic poem. The pessimism 
in portions of Ecclesiastes, which Omar Khayyam has ex- 
aggerated, would never have been regarded as divinely 
authorized if its literary structure had been understood. 
New light is thrown on the Sermon on the Mount and 
some of its hard sayings by seeing how Christ expressed 
them in actual living. 

Brandeis has well said that " nine-tenths of the serious 
controversies which arise in life result from misunder- 
standing ; result from the fact that men do not know the 
facts which to the other party seem important, or other- 
wise fail to appreciate his point of view." 

In revising for the Oxford University Press the helps 
in their Bibles, bringing them up to date, and transform- 
ing them into their Cyclopedic Concordance, my attention 
was repeatedly called to the variety of meanings a single 
word conveyed. The denarius, the unit of Roman coin- 
age, or its equivalent, the drachma of the Grecian, varied 
at different periods and in different places. The " talent" 



224 THE FRONT LINE 

and the " pound " had always two or more different 
values. Gopher represents six different animals in dif- 
ferent parts of our own country ; there are four kinds 
of quart measures, and two kinds of ton, in use to-day in 
our country, to say nothing of other lands. 

This is but an illustration of what is continually occur- 
ring in the intellectual world. Mr. Ruskin is right when 
he says : " There are masked words abroad, which nobody 
understands, but which everybody uses, and most people 
will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they 
mean this or that or the other, of things dear to them : 
for such words wear chameleon cloaks — 'ground-lion' 
cloaks of the color of the ground of any man's fancy. . . . 
There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never 
diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as 
those masked words." 

For instance, in our day, " Conservative " has not al- 
ways the same meaning to different people. Speak the 
word "Higher Critic," and the picture presented varies 
in different minds from an angelic messenger to a devour- 
ing dragon, from the mere insect crawling on the window- 
pane in Poe's story, to the monster rushing down the 
mountain side, as it appeared to his friend on the lounge. 
Years ago, if one said " Election," to one it was as a red 
rag to a wild bull, to another a red rose from the garden 
of God. Now, the study of the Bible is one of the influ- 
ences which is modifying all this. I well remember how 
I was enlightened by seeing how Paul's doctrine of elec- 
tion was illustrated by his own words and experience in 
his shipwreck on the coast of Malta. 

The churches are growing more and more united on 
the great practical doctrines of religion, because they are 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 225 

modifying and correcting their views through the liter- 
ary study of the Bible and attaching more nearly the 
same meaning to the same term. They have often gone 
through the Bible as if riding in an Irish jaunting car, 
back to back, each seeing an opposite view ; now they are 
in a modern car, facing to the front and looking out on 
both sides. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that when John 
and Thomas are talking together there are always six dis- 
tinct personalities taking part in the dialogue, — the real 
John and the real Thomas, John's ideal of himself and 
Thomas's ideal of himself, and each one's ideal of the 
other. There has been a similar experience in the rela- 
tion of different denominations ; but they are coming to 
understand one another better and see each other more 
nearly as they really are in the sight of God, partly, at 
least, through the light which comes from the literary 
study of the Bible. 

" If I could see 
As in truth they be, 
The glories that encircle me, 
I should lightly hold 
This tissued fold, 
With its marvellous curtain of blue and gold. 

" For soon the whole, 
Like a parched scroll, 
Shall before my amazed eyes uproll, 
And without a screen, 
At one burst be seen 
The Presence in which I have always been." l 

III. Concentrated Study on Particular Books or Periods 
or Sections. — The value of this kind of study is closely 



Whytehead. 



226 THE FRONT LINE 

allied to the reading of the whole Bible in course, and 
should be conjoined with it. The same principles that 
apply to literary studies, to travel, and to general culture, 
apply here. It is no longer possible to acquire all knowl- 
edge thoroughly, but it is wise to learn some few things 
as completely as possible, while we know a little of many 
other things. It is like making a garden in the midst of 
a great farm. It is like the experiment station at Orono, 
Maine. It is mining deep and finding treasures which we 
had walked over again and again, unconscious of what 
was beneath the surface. 

One of my brother ministers was near-sighted in his 
younger days. He had never seen a distant prospect. 
He did not know that there was any view beyond his 
narrow range of sight. When he was twelve years old, 
his father gave him a pair of near-sighted spectacles, and 
behold a new world was spread out before him, of which 
hitherto he had no conception. It was almost like the 
creation of a new world. 

Such a widening of the horizon, such an illumination 
of certain passages of Scripture, such a revelation of hid- 
den treasures, have come to me both while studying single 
lessons again and again as they have been repeated in 
our International Lesson courses and while pondering on 
entire books or on the whole period of a course for the 
sake of perfecting a review. Each time the illumination 
from within has increased, and I have almost seen in the 
passage the transformation described by Goethe in his 
Tale of Tales, where the plain form and rough beams of 
the fisherman's hut were transformed by the inner light 
into a silver temple of most exquisite workmanship. 

We have found something of the same experience at 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 227 

family prayers by sometimes studying a single book of 
the Bible for a long period, months or even years in suc- 
cession, with various helps, translations, and sidelights, 
till the book was almost transfigured. In the words of 
another : " A new lesson or fresh subject never reveals 
all its truth in a first study of it. It is the ripest student 
of Shakespeare or of the Bible who finds most of freshness 
in the great book." 

IV. Word Studies. — We must be careful to avoid the 
narrowness which imagines that because the broader Bible 
study is good, and needs to be emphasized because it had 
been too much neglected in the past, therefore there are not 
other ways as good and as necessary to the best Bible study. 

The Scientist's Way. — Professor Henry Drummond, in 
his Tropical Africa, says that he has " lain a whole week 
without stirring from one spot ; . . . for this is the only 
way to find out what really goes on in nature. ... To 
watch uninterruptedly the same few yards of universe 
unfold its complex history, to behold the hourly resur- 
rection of new living things, and miss no change or circum- 
stance even of its minuter parts, to look at all, especially 
the things you have seen before, a hundred times, — to do 
all with patience and reverence, this is the only way to 
study nature." Professor Agassiz used to teach his stu- 
dents to look at a single fish for days at a time. 

The Poet's Way. — Tennyson says : — 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies ; — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 



228 THE FRONT LINE 

The Literary Man's Way. — Mr. Ruskin gives, in his 
Sesame and Lilies, one of the best examples of word study 
in all literature. It is well for every Bible student to 
study it. " First of all," he says, " I tell you earnestly 
and authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must 
get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and 
assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — 
nay, letter by letter. . . . You might read all the books 
in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) 
and remain an utterly illiterate, uneducated person ; but 
if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — 
that is to say, with real accuracy, — you are f orevermore 
in some measure an educated person." 

The Mining Way. — Any one who has read the four 
large volumes of Word Studies on the New Testament, or 
Trench on the Study of Words, will have no question 
concerning the value of such studies. 

Many of our words contain whole poems; others are 
volumes of history or philosophy. In the words of Pro- 
fessor Burton: "Take up the commonest words of daily 
speech, and put them to your ear, and they will sing like 
shells from the sea. There are whole poems in them, 
epics, idyls of every sort." 

For instance, take the common word " help " in Luke 
10 : 40, where Martha asks Jesus to bid her sister that she 
"help " her. This word in the Greek is a long compound 
word, sunantilab'etai, — sun, "together with"; anti, "over 
against, on the other side " ; and laVetai, " to take hold 
of." So that Martha's request was that Mary take hold of 
the burden of housekeeping with her, on the opposite side, 
and bear it with her. The same word is used but once 
more in the New Testament, in Romans 8:26, where we 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 229 

are told that the Spirit "helpeth" our infirmity. The 
Holy Spirit takes hold of one side of the burden of our 
infirmity and bears it together with us. We are not left 
to bear it alone. 

Take the word "tribulations," threshings to separate 
the chaff from the wheat, as described by Archbishop 
Trench, and still more forcible when we see the threshing 
instrument like a harrow with sharp pieces of flint for its 
teeth. 

Again, in Acts 2:26, "my flesh shall rest in hope," the 
word for " rest " means to dwell in a tent or tabernacle. " It 
is a beautiful metaphor," says Professor Vincent. " My 
flesh shall encamp on hope ; pitch its tent there to rest 
through the night of death, until the morning of resur- 
rection." 

When Paul speaks of his death as a "departure," the 
Greek word presents a picture of a ship about leaving 
port, loosing the ropes that bind it to the dock, drawing 
up the anchor, hoisting the sails, and all the preparations 
for starting from the harbor over an unknown sea to the 
desired haven. 

When it is said ye are God's " husbandry," we get little 
idea of the meaning. The Revised Version makes it 
plainer when it translates the word "tilled land." But 
the expression becomes fuller of meaning when we see it 
in our ordinary language as God's "farm," God's "gar- 
den" or "orchard," with the picture of the methods of 
cultivation, the flowers and trees bearing all varieties of 
the fruits of the Spirit. 

Read how William Burnet Wright in his Master and 
Men, a work on the Sermon on the Mount, unfolds the 
meaning of the words " comfort " and "Comforter." 



230 THE FRONT LINE 

We have given more than enough examples to show 
how rich a mine word studies may become. 

I cannot close what I have to say on this point in a 
better way than by sustaining it with the glowing words 
of Farrar, " So in Holy Writ : words of it, expressions of 
it, separate points of it, by themselves, may sometimes 
create an indelible impression. The Jewish high priest 
wore on his Ephod a breastplate, ' ardent with gems oracu- 
lar/ to which was, in some mysterious way, attached an 
oracle, the whole being called Urim and Thummim, or 
'Lights and Truths.' The old Rabbis said that the way 
in which the high priest ascertained the will of God from 
the Urim was that he gazed on the graven names of the 
tribes of Israel, until a fire of God stole in mysterious 
gleams over the letters, and spelt out words of guidance. 
The Holy Scriptures are, if we make them so, such a Urim 
and Thummim, such manifestations of truths, such gleams 
and flashes of Holy Light. Sometimes the Spirit of God, 
without our desire, may, as it were, flame out before 
us, in letters of intense revelation, on the emerald or 
chrysolite of some familiar text ; sometimes, in the night 
of meditation, it may vivify with celestial glimmer- 
ings some long-remembered, but hitherto inoperative, 
words." 1 

V. Learning by Heart. — The last time I ever saw 
Professor Andrew P. Peabody of Harvard, and Bishop 
Phillips Brooks, at a college dinner only a brief time 
before their death, both deplored the neglect of memo- 
rizing the Scriptures, and urged the revival of the cus- 
tom in the Sunday School. And they were right. Any 
system of education, however progressive in other things, 
1 The Bible and its Supremacy. 



BIBLE STUDY FOK THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 231 

will fail of its best results if it overlooks the laying up of 
treasures in the memory. 

There are two seemingly opposite views advocated by 
wise and experienced teachers and educators. 

One class advocates the memorizing of catechisms and 
verses of Scripture and filling the minds of children with 
the forms of sound words, although their meaning is not 
comprehended by them, because they believe that the 
truths enfolded in these seeds of knowledge planted in 
the mind will in after years spring up into plants and 
trees bearing fruit in character and life. 

The other school objects to memorizing because it 
not only "gives in itself no knowledge, but is in a 
sense a barrier to knowledge," "not a help, but a hin- 
drance," and they especially object to memorizing church 
catechisms. 

As usual in such cases, both are right, provided each is 
modified by the other ; for the extreme statements, though 
possible, are rarely realized in actual life. As one has 
said : " The memorizing is all right. The failure to ex- 
plain what is memorized is all wrong." 

Let us get clear ideas on this subject. 

1. As a rule, it is of little value to memorize the words 
of long historical passages, as was once the custom in 
Sunday Schools. Through such memorizing it is possible, 
although extremely rare, to have such instances as that of 
the well-attested case of " Blind Alec " of Scotland, a man 
"of mature years, and of average intelligence, who had 
committed to memory the words of the entire Bible. For 
years he had been in the daily habit of recalling and recit- 
ing passages of Scripture thus memorized. Yet he was 
ignorant of every truth or fact in the Bible. His great 



232 THE FRONT LINE 

memorizing of words had been no help to him in the gain- 
ing of truth." 

What should be memorized is not the words, but the 
general ideas and movements, of history. 

2. It is also true that memorizing the words of a 
mathematical demonstration is a hindrance to learning 
mathematics, and is the worst possible way of studying 
them. " There is a well-authenticated instance of a stu- 
dent who actually learned the six books of Euclid by 
heart, though he could not tell the difference between an 
angle and a triangle." 

What should abide in the memory is the process of 
reasoning. 

3. There is little use, perhaps sometimes a real injury, 
in committing to memory anything entirely disconnected 
from the ideas the words express, anything ungeared to 
previous knowledge or experience. It is like storing seeds 
in a warehouse, where, though they fill it to the roof 
and endure for ages, they can never produce fruits or 
flowers. 

4. But it should be remembered that this rarely occurs ; 
for in most cases of memory work, even of catechisms, and 
much more of the best Scripture truths, there is some 
connection with previous knowledge or with life. It is 
not necessary that any truth should be fully compre- 
hended, but only that there should be an open door into 
it, some ray of real meaning although that meaning reaches 
to heaven, some thread of attachment to the needs of the 
soul. The seeds planted thus in the soil of the mind are 
likely to germinate at some time. And this is the usual 
experience ; certainly in almost all cases beyond the 
Primary Department. I believe you will find a thousand 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 233 

cases of injury from the failure to commit enough Scrip- 
ture to memory, to one where committing to memory has 
done harm, if committing choice Scripture truths ever 
does harm. 

Ruskin was taught not only to read the Bible daily, but 
to learn a few verses by heart each day. " It might be 
beyond me altogether ; that she did not care about ; but 
she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I 
should get hold of it by the right end. It is strange that 
of all the pieces of the Bible that my mother thus taught 
me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was to 
my child's mind most repulsive, — Psalm 119 — has now 
become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing 
and glorious passion of love for the law of God." 1 And 
he expresses the utmost gratitude to his mother for the 
"consistent lessons which so exercised me in the Scrip- 
tures as to make every word of them familiar to my ear 
in habitual music — yet in that familiarity reverenced, as 
transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct." If 
I were to live my life over again, I would learn much 
more by heart than I did in my youth, — the best hymns, 
the choicest passages from the poets and other literature, 
and especially the most surpassing spiritual, life-giving, 
and life-guarding portions of Holy Scripture. There are 
no better companions, no better teachers, than an intimate 
communion with the best people, the best thoughts, the 
most glorious truths in the world. I cannot tell you how 
much of an educating power has been what little I did 
learn. The best and richest words and thoughts continu- 
ally in the mind become channels for our own thoughts 
to flow in, till they become a second nature. 

1 Prceterita. 



234 THE FRONT LINE 

" Those are never alone who are accompanied by noble 
thoughts." 1 

" Recollection is the only Paradise from which we can- 
not be turned out." 2 

" A Land of Promise, a land of memory, 
A Land of Promise flowing with the milk 
And honey of delicious memories." 3 

Out of Delphi came the oracle, " If the Athenians desire 
good citizens, let them put whatsoever is most beautiful 
into the ears of their sons." 

So they put into their ears golden earrings, as the Jews 
wear phylacteries. 

But Pericles told them that the oracle meant jewels of 
thought set in words of gold. 

The teacher has done the best neither for himself nor 
for the pupils under his care, unless he first fills his own 
mind, and then the memories of his pupils, with the most 
precious passages of the Bible, so that he and they can go 
through life accompanied by a host of angelic truths which 
fill the atmosphere around him like the angel faces in 
Raphael's Sistine Madonna. 

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any vir- 
tue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." 4 

VI. The Magnet Method. — Under this head I wish to 
present some of the time-saving and labor-saving methods 
of enriching your Bible studies, which, from long experi- 
ence and necessity, I have found most helpful in gather- 
ing about the Bible for easiest and most effective use 
1 Sidney. 2 Richter. 3 Tennyson. 4 Paul. 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 235 

the great mass of materials which present themselves from 
day to day. 

Dr. Holmes, in the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, rep- 
resents the Divinity-student at the table as saying, after 
listening to one of the doctor's famous illustrations, — 
44 There is no power I envy so much as that of seeing 
analogies and making comparisons. I don't understand 
how it is that some minds are continually coupling 
thoughts or objects that seem not in the least related to 
each other, until all at once they are put in a certain light, 
and you wonder that you did not always see that they 
were as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me as a sort 
of miraculous gift." "You call it miraculous!" Then 
the doctor pictures a man by the ocean with a tin cup 
taking up a gill of sea-water, " and you call the tin cup a 
miraculous possession ! It is the ocean that is miraculous, 
my infant apostle ! " Then, picturing all the fancies that 
poetry has dreamed or humanity has felt, he goes on to say 
" the Epic which held them all, though its letters filled the 
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of 
similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe." 

Almost the same may be said of literature, and of life 
of which literature is the expression. Not only from 
books, but from the weekly papers, religious and secular, 
from magazines of almost all kinds, scientific, secular, 
literary, educational, and Biblical, there flock, like doves 
to their windows, thoughts, facts, illustrations, explora- 
tions, to the reader of the Bible. 



Into regions yet untrod, 
And read what is still unread 
In the Manuscripts of God." 



236 THE FRONT LINE 

After trying almost every conceivable way of utilizing 
these things, I have settled down upon certain methods as 
the most helpful to me, and therefore probably to the 
teacher and minister. 

1. Use the margins of your Bible for noting references 
to illustrations or facts in the books you read, putting the 
name of the book and the page opposite to the verse on 
which it throws light, also marking the passage in the 
book itself, if the book is your own. It is quite an advan- 
tage to own the books you read, on account of this privi- 
lege of marking them, and also noting on the blank leaves 
the marked pages which throw especial light on the Bible. 

For instance, in one of my Bibles I find on the margin 
against Exodus 12 : 3, " borrowed," "see Trumbull's Orien- 
tal Social Life, p. 319, etc.," and on the next chapter a ref- 
erence to his Kadesh-barnea, the best help in understanding 
the route of the exodus. I turn again to Matthew 27 : 36, 
and find recorded opposite it " Sidney Lanier's Poems, A 
Ballad of Trees and the Master "; against Matthew 23 : 29, 
" Lowell's Essays on Dante, p. 141 " ; at Matthew 24 : 36, 
37, " Kidd's Social Evolution, p. 134, Lecky's History of 
European Morals, I, 359"; against Mark 6:3, "Brown- 
ing's Poems, The Boy and the Angel, p. 256 " ; opposite 
" under the shadow of his wings," Psalm 17 : 8, I would 
write " Bowl of Prseneste," to remind me of that beautiful 
illustration in a series around the rim of that famous bowl 
from Southern Italy, which was told me by a learned man, 
and which I can find pictured and described in some vol- 
ume of my Notes. In this way there is a very helpful 
correlation between the literature we read and the Bible. 

2. Another method is quite as helpful in some ways 
and requires less time. I have always great reason to 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 237 

be thankful to Mr, Joseph C. Thomas, of The Methodist 
Book Concern, New York, for showing me, several years 
ago, among his many ingenious plans for libraries, his Index 
Bible. It consists simply of heavy manilla-paper files, 
folded thrice in a kind of open envelope, one for each 
book of the Bible. The name of the book is placed on 
four corners, so that, however it is put in the bookcase, it 
is easy to find the book you want. These are placed on a 
shelf close to my desk, and into them are put cuttings of 
all kinds that illustrate any particular text, marking the 
chapter and verse on the cutting, and, at first, putting on 
the outside of each envelope the chapter and verse to 
which there was a reference. But this became too bur- 
densome. I have also been inclined of late to use this 
Index Bible for references to literature, simply noting 
down the book, the page, and the point illustrated, on a 
slip of paper and placing it in the folded envelope to 
which it belongs. It is perfectly simple for any one to 
make these folders out of heavy manilla or leather board 
to be found at bookbinders'. 

I have found it useful to make a distinction between 
illustrations of subjects, and those that add some knowl- 
edge to particular verses. The latter I put in my Index 
Bible ; the illustrations I simply throw into a drawer 
without classification, because in many cases the same 
illustration will fit several related subjects ; and it is good 
once in a while to run through the whole list, both to sift 
them, and to become acquainted with the contents of the 
drawer. 

3. There is a use of magazine articles which is a great 
improvement over the old way of keeping them in yearly 
bundles stored away in some odd corner of the house. I 



238 THE FIIONT LINE 

found this way almost entirely useless for Bible helps. 
Even binding them was not much more convenient. It 
took too long to find the articles on any particular sub- 
ject. There are continually coming out long articles by 
biblical experts and explorers in Bible lands, which are 
more thorough than commentaries can be, and later than 
most books on the subjects of which they treat. These 
articles I cut out and placed in home-made folders like 
those of the Index Bible, marked with the names of the 
books of the Bible, and also with two or three other sub- 
jects, such as Education, the Sunday School. Thus every- 
thing on any book of the Bible is ready for immediate use. 

4. The card catalogue can be used with great advan- 
tage ; not for cataloguing the books in one's own library, 
for though that library may mount up into several thou- 
sands, one ought to be so acquainted with it as to know 
how to put his hand upon any book on any particular sub- 
ject ; but for keeping up a knowledge of the best books of 
the past, and of those that are continually being issued. 

The most difficult part of my work has been to know 
what there is, all there is, and the best there is, on every- 
thing pertaining to the Bible. By watching the book 
notices and cutting them out, by studying not only the 
great libraries, but every minister's library you can reach, 
and by conversing with experts as you meet them, and 
then putting the results on the cards of an ordinary card 
catalogue arrangement, under each book of the Bible, sub- 
divided as often as may be convenient, you will soon have 
a knowledge of the chief literature on the Bible available 
for buying or research in the great libraries. 

VII. Studying the Bible in Different Versions and Lan- 
guages. — While comparatively few Sunday School teach- 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 239 

ers can make an exhaustive study of the Bible, which is 
the work of a lifetime and more, yet while they are pass- 
ing through life it is well to make the best use of the 
opportunities they have. The hours of lesson study, the 
times of devotional reading, the seasons of family prayers, 
may be rendered more effective and more interesting by 
studying and reading the Scriptures in a variety of ways. 
This is especially true of family prayers, which give the 
characteristic atmosphere to the family, and through social 
reading gives an especially good opportunity to gain the 
advantage which comes from reading in different versions 
and in as many languages as he can understand. 

The advantage of reading various versions arises from 
the fact that some of the Hebrew and Greek words have 
no exact synonyms in English. The words do not cover 
exactly the same territory. For instance, a Greek word 
is translated "power "in the Authorized, and "authority" 
in the Revisions. But both meanings are included in the 
Greek word, and neither version gives the full meaning. 
So "patience" in " tribulation worketh patience," is trans- 
lated " steadfastness " in the American Revision, emphasiz- 
ing endurance while " patience " emphasizes the burden, 
but the Greek word includes both meanings. 

Thus every translation, however perfect, comes short of 
giving the whole meaning. In the words of Professor 
Henry M. Whitney : — 

" While all translation, outside of science or other exact 
knowledge, is difficult and in some sense impossible, the 
translation of the Bible is one of the most difficult things 
to which the hand of man has ever been set. The best- 
qualified can achieve it only imperfectly, and, almost wjiile 
they are printing their version, new discoveries come to 



240 THE FKONT LINE 

make them regret some decision, and the English language 
has shifted a little, so that some word that fitted exactly 
now fits no more. . . . No translator is perfect or makes 
a perfect work ; there are always words and passages that 
are open to doubt ; the terms of no language exactly cover 
those of another. 

" Hebrew is probably as different from English as any 
other language, living or dead. It is dead, and dead in a 
far distant past. . . . Imagine a language having no 
present tense, no perfect, no imperfect, no pluperfect, no 
future-perfect, no subjunctive, no optative, no infinitive ! 
... Its prepositions often put one into painful perplex- 
ity as to which, among the delicately differentiated Eng- 
lish prepositions, is the one that ought to be used. . . . 

" Hence the cases are frequent where there is a wide 
range of possible translation : many of these are noted in 
the margin of the English Revision (that of 1885), and 
still more in that of the recent American Revision, but a 
still larger proportion are left unmarked." 

Hence the advantage of different versions which enable 
us to see the truth from several points of view. 

Again, there is in each translation a somewhat different 
atmosphere arising from the temperament or circum- 
stances of the translators, or the purpose they have in 
view, whether to meet the views of the scholarly, as in 
the English and American Revisions, or to reach and at- 
tract the general reader, as in the Twentieth Century 
New Testament. 

Moreover, there is a wide difference in the literary ar- 
rangement, in the paragraphing, in verses, in numbering 
the verses, in the forms of printing poetry, and even decid- 
ing what is poetry, in the arrangement of the dramatic 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 241 

portions, and dialogues, in the divisions into chapters and 
sections, in the printing of quotations from the Old 
Testament. 

We will take a brief glance at some of the modern ver- 
sions and forms in which the Bible is presented to us. 

1. The Authorized Version of 1611, in which most of our 
Bibles in common use are presented. No other English ver- 
sion has equalled it in the perfection of its style and the 
beauty and nobility of its language. More than any other 
book or books has the common English Bible been the 
maker of the best English prose. " It is written in the 
noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite 
beauties of a merely literary form." "It lives on the ear 
like a music that can never be forgotten." "Because of 
its grandeur and its beauty it has a wonderful spell for 
the heart; it still rings in the heart like the peal of 
remembered bells." 

2. The Revised Version of 1881 and 1885, by a selection 
of the best scholars in Great Britain and America, a mon- 
ument of exact scholarship, surpassing the Authorized in 
its fidelity to the originals, and with a more correct text 
from which to translate, but not so musical and perfect 
in its English. But Dr. Curry, the President of the 
School of Expression, says that " with practice and famil- 
iarity in reading it aloud the sense of its imperfection 
disappears, and the reader will soon grow to feel its 
superiority over the Authorized Version." 

3. The American Revision of 1901, in which are incor- 
porated the changes desired by the American section of 
the Revision Committee, but rejected by the English sec- 
tion; together with such other changes as the American 
Committee after long and careful study deemed it wise to 



242 THE FRONT LINE 

make. On the whole a decided improvement on the 
Revision of 1881 and 1885. 

These are the three most important English versions. 
While it is true that the two later versions have made not a 
few decided improvements, and have corrected some real 
errors, and are nearer to the original Greek than the 
Authorized, yet these later versions have not become pop- 
ular reading, and few are being sold annually compared 
with the iinmense sales of the common version. At two 
very large Bible publishing houses I was told that only 
about 5 per cent of the Bibles sold were of the Revisions, 
and 95 per cent were the Authorized. 

It is well to look the reasons for this squarely in the 
face, so that something may be done toward a remedy. 

First, — to begin with the lesser reasons, — the difference 
between the versions is not sufficiently great, in the opinion 
of ordinary readers, to cause them to put away the Bibles 
they have been using, and all go over together to the new; 
which they would need to do, because in all public respon- 
sive use it is very confusing to have different texts. No 
great doctrine or truth is changed by the changes in the 
new versions. 

Second. The old version is familiar, much of it learned 
by heart, in musical English, and there is a natural hesita- 
tion before choosing a different version, less perfect in 
these ways, so long as they can correct the old by using 
the new for sidelights and necessary changes. 

Third. There are some changes in those passages which 
have been long used almost as liturgies, which seem un- 
necessary and are very trying. Professor Whitney thinks 
that the change in the Lord's Prayer from the large range 
of " Deliver us from evil " to the narrow " Deliver us 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 243 

from the evil one " has been one of the serious obstacles 
to the popular acceptance of the new versions. I would 
add the leaving out of the benediction from the Lord's 
Prayer ; and the taking away a large part of the power 
and blessing of the Christinas song of the angels in Luke, 
by changes in the translation due to a single letter in one 
word of the Greek. It would not have required much of 
a strain on the principles of the translators to have put all 
these changes in the margin, and let these and other litur- 
gical portions remain as they were. 

Fourth. There is a strong feeling that we have not yet 
reached the final Revision, and this is confirmed by the issue 
of the American Revision, and of the several versions de- 
scribed below, besides many tentative versions of individ- 
ual books. Hence the great expense of a general change 
will not be likely to be incurred. The two kinds are not 
easily used together, nor will they be till some change is 
made in the form in which they are printed. 

Fifth. The one great hindrance to the general popular 
acceptance of the Revisions lies in the exceedingly cum- 
bersome and solid method of paragraphing, rendering 
them difficult of use for many purposes, and repellent to 
the popular mind, as well as to many scholars. If Shake- 
speare were paragraphed in the same solid way, even the 
dialogues and conversations being run together in solid 
form, he would lose half his readers. A large part of the 
fascination of the Twentieth Century New Testament, and 
of Lasserre's Gospels in French, — which created so much 
enthusiasm in France that the Pope retracted his permis- 
sion for its circulation, — is created by their almost perfect 
paragraphing. 

The verse numbers on the margins of the Revision are 



244 THE FRONT LINE 

some relief. The verse numbers in the text of the Ameri- 
can Revision are more opposed to what is sought by 
paragraphing than is even the old versification. The 
printing of the Psalms and all poetry in poetic forms is a 
great gain. But on the whole, the verse form of the old 
version is preferred by most people, not because it is use- 
ful for proof texts, as one man says, nor for the conven- 
ience of commentators, as Professor Moulton says, but 
because it is so convenient for reference, so open faced to 
read, so helpful in responsive reading, in the public ser- 
vice and in the family, so referred to in thousands of books, 
so attractive in form as to far overbear any gain from the 
solid paragraphing, which can easily be retained in some 
other way. 

It was a pleasure to find that Professor Henry M. 
Whitney, now Librarian at Northampton, Massachusetts, 
has expressed the same feeling in a series of enlightening 
articles in the Bibliotheca Sacra, which I hope will appear 
in book form, for they are the best literary discussion of 
the various revisions and translations I have seen. He 
says: "In this respect the English Committee certainly 
made a grave mistake. It was here that they were expected 
to make one of their greatest improvements, — an improve- 
ment for which the way had been prepared by the para- 
graph Bibles ; and yet dismay is hardly too strong a word 
for the effect of their changes upon the public mind. A 
paragraph to a verse, as in the Authorized Version, was 
not right, of course ; but a paragraph to a page or more 
was a great deal worse. The translator who wishes to 
make the Bible interesting to those who are not scholars, 
whether young or old, will make as many paragraphs as 
the matter will bear : the best proof of this is to watch 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 245 

such persons turning over books to find one that ; looks 
interesting,' and deciding which to try by the openness 
of the page. The long paragraphs of the English Revi- 
sion were a distinct loss to the hold of the Bible upon the 
mass of the English-speaking peoples ; the American Com- 
mittee have come part way back to the attractiveness of 
the Authorized Version in this respect. 

" Taking at random the first five chapters of Acts, we 
find that the English and the American Revisers make 
the same number of paragraphs, besides the poetry, — 
twenty-two in all : but that the Twentieth Century New 
Testament makes fifty-one, besides frequently using Her- 
bert Spencer's device of the sub-paragraph, or a break 
of half an inch in a line. It is easy to tell which of the 
three bodies of translators are by their work the most 
skilful fishers for men. It is a good thing for a trans- 
lator, a scholar, to work from the standpoint of the tender- 
ness, the condescension, of Christ." 

In conversing with Mr. Frowde, the head of the Oxford 
University Press, I asked him why he did not print the 
Revision in a better-paragraphed form, like the Twentieth 
Century New Testament. He replied that he had long 
wanted to print an edition in verse form, but the Revisers 
were unwilling to have it done. 

The time is coming when there will be a paragraphed 
Bible which will contain the advantages of all the systems. 
Whatever publisher shall accomplish this with the Revi- 
sions will do more to increase their circulation than all 
other influences combined. 

In our prayer meeting and Sunday School we supply 
for general use a versified form of the Revision (1881 to 
1885), and it makes little clashing with those who bring 



246 THE FRONT LINE 

the Authorized Version with them. And whatever pub- 
lisher shall put the Authorized Version in the best-para- 
graphed form, as finely paragraphed as possible, but 
making the verse references as easy as in the common 
form, will be on the way to a fortune. 

4. Holman's Interlinear Parallel Bible is an ingenious 
but simple method of presenting the two versions in such 
a way that the differences are seen at a glance. The 
work is done with great technical excellence, and with a 
carefulness which notes the most minute variations. 

It is very handy for use in the study, in the home, or 
in the class. Professor George E. Day of Yale Univer- 
sity commends it as a means of obtaining most promptly, 
and with the least labor, a comprehensive and at the same 
time particular view of the agreement on the one hand 
and the differences on the other between the so-called 
Authorized English translation of the Bible and the 
more accurate renderings adopted by the Anglo-Ameri- 
can Revision Committee. 

5. The Modern Reader's Bible is the Revised Version 
arranged and paragraphed in such a manner as to make 
that version very attractive and readable. It is published 
in a series of small volumes, in plain, but neat binding, 
and each book of the Bible has a most enlightening and 
suggestive introduction by Professor Moulton. This Bible 
is one of the most helpful now in existence for private 
reading. It is difficult to use at family prayers, or in any 
social way, because there is nothing in the text to connect 
it with the chapters and verses of the common version. 

I only wish there was an edition as beautifully bound 
as the Temple Bible, and with headings referring to the 
Authorized Version's chapters and verses. Then the 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 247 

whole set, or particular volumes of it, would be an attrac- 
tive present for Christmas and other times. 

6. The Temple Bible, also in small volumes, is the 
Authorized Version finely paragraphed, with introduc- 
tions from the higher critical standpoint, with notes, Bib- 
lical references in English literature, and other helps. 
Each volume is beautifully bound in the same form as the 
charming Temple Shakespeare. One difficulty in using 
it with other translations is chat the connection with the 
Authorized Version is noted only at the head of each 
page. 

7. The Twentieth Century New Testament is a new trans- 
lation from the Greek into modern English, presented in 
modern form, fully paragraphed, with indented headings. 
It puts the Gospels in so attractive a form that one reads 
it with the charm of a story-book or drama. It is the 
best paragraphed of all the English versions. 

The translation is by twenty Greek scholars in Eng- 
land and is remarkably well done, except that sometimes 
it fails in dignity, and uses trivial words by preference, 
where nobler words would have been equally understood 
by all. 

" In this translation not only every word, but also the 
emphasis placed upon every word, has been carefully 
weighed, and an effort made to give the exact force and 
meaning in modern English." "The reception given to 
this version shows not only that its serious intent has 
been recognized, but that, in some degree at least, it meets 
a want that is felt." 

It can often be made very attractive in a class, and will 
interest them like a story-book, as no verse form and no 
solid paragraphing can do. 



248 THE FRONT LINE 

" To quote a case in point ; lately a copy of this Twenti- 
eth Century New Testament was missing and it was found 
that a servant had carried it away to read in the kitchen. 
When she handed it back she remarked, 'I have never 
seen it so plain before.' " 

8. The New Testament in Modern Speech, an idiomatic 
translation into everyday English, by Headmaster Rich- 
ard F. Weymouth, edited by E. Hampden Cook, M.A. 
(England). 

This is a sincere attempt to make the New Testament 
attractive to the common people, in order that " the com- 
mon people may still hear the ' Gospel gladly,' because in- 
telligently, and because not shrouded in a tone which is 
now to them out of date. What Luther wrote in 1534 
is surely true to-day, and may his longing be ours, ' That 
the husbandman should sing portions to himself as he fol- 
lows the plough . . . and the Scriptures be read by the 
clown and mechanic' " 

It has many good points and choice translations. But 
its paragraphing is too solid (even its conversations are 
run together) for it ever to be popular to those for whom 
it was intended. If the editor, who was one of the trans- 
lators of the Twentieth Century New Testament, should 
paragraph it like that translation, it would add greatly to 
its usefulness, and aid the cause for which it was made. 

9. The Modern American Bible, The Books of the 
Bible in Modern English for American Readers, by the 
Rev. Frank Schell Ballentine, Scranton, Pennsylvania. 
Revised edition. This has the same purpose as the Wey- 
mouth-Cook translation : to be an idiomatic translation 
into "Modern American" form and phrase. The new 
edition leaves unchanged all those portions which have 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 249 

become so familiar as to be almost liturgical in use and 
in love, as the Lord's prayer, and all the hymns in the 
first chapters of Luke. The work is well done, and de- 
serves high praise. But though better paragraphed than 
the English New Testament in Modern Speech, it still 
lacks much, in that direction, of its possibilities for popu- 
lar use. 

10. The New Testament in Modern English, by Ferrar 
Fenton, M.C.A.A. (London). This has many of the 
qualities belonging to Numbers 8 and 9, but is not so 
well known. 

None of the versions by individuals, or by a self-chosen 
company, however useful for other purposes, can ever take 
the place of authoritative Versions made by the widest 
range of scholarship in the English-speaking countries. 

11. Bibles for children, in which are omitted those por- 
tions of Scripture which are not adapted to children, and 
not written for them, nor interesting to them. These find 
their best use in families where there are small children, 
for reading on Sundays and at family prayers, and for 
bed-time stories. 

12. Translations of separate books, such as the Poly- 
chrome Bible, of which only Joshua, Judges, Psalms, Isaiah, 
and Ezekiel are out in English; various translations of 
the Psalms, of Job, of Isaiah, and other books ; Delitzsch's 
New Testament in Hebrew. 

13. Polyglot Bibles, such as the Polyglotten-Bibel in five 
volumes. The Old Testament is given in Hebrew, Greek, 
Latin, and German, in parallel columns ; the New Testa- 
ment in Greek, Latin, and German. The Parallel New 
Testament in Greek and English. The Greek is the text 
followed in the Revised Version, and the English in two 



250 THE FRONT LINE 

versions, the Authorized and Revised, all in parallel col- 
umns, with one column for references and for writing 
notes in a fuller way than even the wide margin Bibles 
allow. 

14. Diatessarons of the Gospels. — The Diatessaron 
(made from four), called also Monotessaron (four in one), 
consists of the Four Gospels, woven into one continuous 
narrative. The earliest is Tatian's Diatessaron, about 
170 A.D. There are many others. While for ordinary 
reading the Gospel narrative in its four separate forms is 
by far the best arrangement, and Macaulay asks, "Who 
would lose in the confusion of a Diatessaron the peculiar 
charm which belongs to the narrative of the disciple 
whom Jesus loved? " yet its occasional use at home or in 
the class will give to many the experience which Amos R. 
Wells in his excellent Sunday School Success records as his 
own : " It has given the life and person of Christ marvel- 
lous vividness, setting facts in their due order, location, 
relations, and proportions, while the facility it affords is 
constant inspiration to fresh, delightful study. . . . Not 
only every Sunday School teacher, but every Bible scholar, 
should own one." 

The Ideal Bible Version. — All these Bible versions are 
tentative ; they are preparing the way for something bet- 
ter ; they are " the multitude of counsellors " through 
whom is " safety " and " wise guidance " ; they are the 
foundations on which shall be built the ideal version which 
will abide for many generations, and for which the present 
generation is waiting. 

(1) The Ideal Version will be made as were the Author- 
ized and the two great Revisions, by a large number of 
persons selected for their especial fitness for this work. 



BIBLE STUDY FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 251 

But they will be selected from a wider field, including the 
very best scholars in English as well as in Hebrew and 
Greek, and some of those few who have the gift of stating 
the greatest truths in the best popular language, and some 
of true poetic feeling who can give the charm of the most 
perfect musical rhythm to the words. 

(2) It will first be issued in tentative form, in order to 
have the light which the whole English world can cast 
upon it before it is put into its permanent form. 

(3) It will embody all the best that has been gained by 
all previous versions. 

(4) It will embody the very best scholarship, but will 
be made so that the common people will understand it, be 
attracted to it, and love it. It will be a Bible for children 
and the home. 

(5) It will be so paragraphed and arranged as to em- 
body the best of all literary forms. It will be better 
paragraphed than the Twentieth Century Neio Testament. 
It will contain the larger subject paragraphs of the Revi- 
sions. It will embody all the conveniences for general 
use now employed in the verse and chapter arrangement 
of the Authorized Version. It will make it easy to recog- 
nize the present arrangement of chapter and verse, to 
which all literature for more than a thousand years is 
adapted. 



XI 

SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 

One of the strongest motives which induced me to 
undertake the writing of this book has been the desire 
to promote to the uttermost of my ability a wider knowl- 
edge and more extensive use of the best rooms, the best 
apparatus, and the best general equipment for the Sun- 
day School work. There is hardly a Sunday School I 
visit, even the best, the most up-to-date ones, but could 
easily make decided improvements if they knew what some 
other schools are doing. And most schools have some- 
thing they can teach to others. 

I continually observe the building of large and expen- 
sive churches in cultured communities, which provide 
everything most beautiful, most helpful, and most con- 
venient for the adult worshippers; but not only fail to 
give the children that come to the church comfortable 
seats, where their feet can reach the floor, but give far 
from equal accommodations for the Sunday School and 
the children and the adults that attend the Sunday School 
service. 

I do not know whether this is due to a want of knowl- 
edge of what is best and of what others in like circum- 
stances are doing, or to a lack of realization of its value 
and necessity. 

When, only ten or twelve j 7 ears ago, it was proposed to 

252 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 253 

transform the outgrown chapel and Sunday School rooms 
in a beautiful and cultured suburb of Boston, not one in 
our church was found, except Rev. Dr. F. E. Clark and 
myself, who had even seen one of the modern model Sun- 
day School rooms. It is but a few years since there was 
but one such building, so far as I know, in the whole state 
of Massachusetts. The number is gradually increasing, 
and many more are approximating it, being modified by 
the idea ; and in many parts of the country the number is 
growing with comparative rapidity, and most large, new 
churches are influenced by the plan. 

The elder Dr. Tyng was right when, in a public ad- 
dress in Henry Ward Beecher's Church, he said : " For 
years, if the choice before me in my work as a pastor has 
been between one child and two adults, I have always 
been ready to take the child. It seems to me that the 
Devil would never ask anything more of a minister than 
to have him feel that his mission was chiefly to the 
grown-up members of his congregation, while some one 
else was to look after the children." Then, pointing to 
the main entrance of the Plymouth Church auditorium, 
he continued, with that peculiar intensity of his : " I can 
see the Devil looking in at that door, and saying to the 
minister on this platform, 'Now you just stand there and 
fire away at the old folks, and I'll go around and steal 
away the little ones, — as the Indians steal ducks, swim- 
ming under them, catching them by the legs, and pulling 
them under.'" 1 

I do not mean that the church edifice, which is for all, 
both old and young, should not be more beautiful, more 

1 See the whole dramatic story, as told by H. C. Trumbull in his Yale 
Lectures on the Sunday School, 



254 THE FRONT LINE 

expensive, more adapted to cultured tastes than the Sun- 
day School rooms, but that these latter should be as per- 
fectly adapted to the work to be done in them as the 
Church is for its purposes. No Church can afford to 
neglect in any degree the best training for the young, 
who are to become the Church of the future. 

The best machinery for its purpose in the whole world 
should be that which enables religious education to accom- 
plish its purposes. More rapid than the improvement of 
all methods and means for carrying on the business of the 
world should be the improvement in the means of educa- 
tion; and swifter than the progress of school buildings 
and apparatus for the day schools should be the progress 
in Sunday School buildings, and all the aids to teaching 
the Bible and training children for the Kingdom of God. 

The heart, the soul of the Sunday School is the teach- 
ing, — the teacher, the persons taught, and the lesson 
taught. There is no limit to what this soul of the Sun- 
day School can become and can do under any circum- 
stances, however adverse. 

But it does make a difference in what kind of a body 
this soul lives, whether the body is the best instrument 
for the soul's activities, or whether the soul must be ham- 
pered and hindered by using its energy in contending 
against weakness and sickness and pain, bad food, and 
imperfect senses. 

There have, indeed, been saints in lonely deserts and 
in the very purlieus of sin. There have been souls of the 
greatest usef ulness and power in feeble, pain-racked, bed- 
ridden bodies. Marvellous works have been accomplished 
by the blind, which few with seeing eyes could have done. 
These facts go — like the strains of music heard in war- 



SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOMS AND EQUIPMENT 255 

time, thrilling the soldiers' hospital — through this weary 
world, singing songs of comfort, of hope, of triumph, to 
those who cannot have the best, who are distracted with 
care, wrestling with poverty, burdened with infirmities. 

" O ye beneath Life's crushing load, 

Whose forms are bending low, 
Who toil along the climbing way, 

With painful steps and slow ! 
Look now, for glad and golden hours 

Come swiftly on the wing ; 
O rest beside the weary road, 

And hear {these) angels sing." 

But the bass to this triumphal air is that only the soul 
that does its level best with what it has can join in that 
song ; that whosoever rests content with the poorest in- 
strument when a better is within its power, is not fit to 
do the best under disadvantages, fails in the very power 
by which triumph can be won. A great musician can 
produce fine music on a common violin ; but he that uses 
such a one when he can have a Stradivarius proves not 
only that he is a fool, but that he is not a good musician. 
Now this is a fitting parable for the Church and the 
Sunday School. It is a chorus of angels singing songs 
of cheer, of encouragement, of deliverance from the 
Slough of Despond, to the numberless churches and Sun- 
day Schools who are doing God's work in the midst of 
poverty and scanty numbers, contending with every dis- 
advantage. For whatever belongs to spiritual preparation 
— the Bible, the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, the Kingship of 
Jesus, the power of the Grace of God — is always theirs. 
With these they can do magnificent work for the Kingdom 
of God, in rude schoolhouses, in barns, in hovels, in the 



256 THE FRONT LINE 

wilderness, in prisons, as has been clone over and over 
again in the history of the Church. 

But never when it could have had better instruments, 
never when the world was first and religion second, never 
when it builds beautiful houses for itself and lets the 
church and Sunday School buildings decay. 

The spirit that uses the latest machinery in its factories, 
but the old and worn-out for its churches and Sunday 
School, is not the spirit that can triumph over disadvan- 
tages, or do good work anywhere. It signals its own 
defeat. David slew Goliath with a sling, but he that 
should undertake to-day to capture Fort Arthur or Gib- 
raltar with David's sling would simply show his want of 
patriotism and tell the world that he is not even a soldier. 

The Situation. — There are two kinds of Sunday School 
buildings, from this point of view, — 

The old and the new. Or rather, 

The old and those about to come into being. 

There are two kinds of Sunday Schools, — 

The small and the large. 

There are two kinds of communities, — 

The wealthy and the poor. 

There are endless degrees and combinations of these. 
All these six things must be considered in deciding what 
is best in any given case. 

Mr. Ruskin is right when he contends that the public 
buildings — the church, the schoolhouse, the library — 
should be the best, the most beautiful, the most expen- 
sive buildings in any community. The church build- 
ings should tower in quality above all business blocks, all 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 257 

houses, as does its heaven-pointed spire, because they are 
for all, because they symbolize the highest, the noblest, 
the most important influences in the community, and 
because the recognition of these is an educating power. 
The Sunday School room and its equipment in a wealthy 
community should be as complete and perfect as wealth 
and talent can make them. 

- 1. Because they express the comparative value which 
the community sets upon religion and upon religious edu- 
cation and upon the training of the children. 

2. They are an "ideal made real" toward which all 
less-favored communities can grow ; from which they can 
take whatever of good is within their power, or adapt 
them in less expensive ways to their needs. Thus they 
become " a city set on a hill." 

Every community can take to heart some words spoken 
concerning one of the noblest characters in Stephanie the 
Uncrowned: "From boyhood he had had an object and 
an ideal. If every man and woman started in life thus 
armed, there would be surely less sin, less sorrow, in the 
world. It matters little what that ideal be, if only it 
partake of the nature of an aspiration, a soaring upwards! 
It may be impossible of realization, a thing which an ordi- 
nary human being would not recognize as feasible ; never- 
theless it will suffice to save that human soul alive; to 
prevent it from drifting into utter darkness." 

3. By this means those who contemplate new buildings 
can make them as near the ideals as means and disposi- 
tion will allow. The well-known Akron Sunday School 
rooms, the first made on this modern plan, have influenced 
the church and Sunday School architecture throughout a 
wide region, if not the whole country. 



258 THE FRONT LINE 

4. In the case of old and established buildings, it may 
not be feasible in some cases to remodel them, but there 
are almost none which cannot be improved at small ex- 
pense, and made more convenient, more adapted to their 
purpose, by simple devices, and by various means of equip- 
ment, such as will be described below. Many of them 
can be home made. 

5. The rooms and general arrangements need to be 
quite different for large schools from those which are best 
for small schools, though rather by additions than by 
changes of principle. As a rule, too large a number in 
any one room is a disadvantage, and renders it more 
difficult to keep order. The President of the Teachers 
College of Columbia University told me that one great 
difficulty in some of the large New York Sunday Schools 
was that the boys who in a day school with fifty in a room 
behave well are almost sure to be more disorderly and 
more difficult to control where five hundred are in a room 
together. 

Exhibits are a most important factor in every Sunday 
School Convention, but it is a difficult and laborious work 
to collect a complete and satisfactory exhibit for each one, 
or for even the annual State Conventions. 

But it is possible for the State Associations to gather 
gradually such an exhibit at its headquarters. It will 
contain plans and samples of everything that pertains to 
the ideal Sunday School, so that whoever wishes to know 
what there is, or to gain hints for his own school, can find 
the best that is known. 

Plans of the best schools will gladly be sent by the 
architects. The publishers will send copies of their books 
and periodicals. The map makers will send maps and 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 259 

charts, those who publish pictures will put them on exhibi- 
tion . Makers of tables, kindergarten materials, blackboards, 
will send samples. Every kind of book on the Sunday 
School, on pedagogy, on child study, can be collected. The 
Sunday Schools will send specimens of their map work, 
picture and written lives of Christ, examination papers. 

The only instance of such an exhibit of which I am 
aware is that of the Sunday School Commission of the 
Diocese of New York, at 29 Lafayette Place, under the 
charge of Rev. William Walter Smith, M.A., M.D. This 
embraces over nine thousand articles, and was sent to the 
R. E. A. Convention at Philadelphia and to the Episcopal 
General Convention at Trinity Church, Boston. 

Whatever exhibit is prepared for the State Sunday School 
Associations should be lent, in whole or in part, wherever 
desired, and its teachings be made known as widely as 
possible. 

Model Sunday School Buildings 

The Akron Plan. — Almost simultaneously with the 
adoption of the International Lessons, there naturally 
arose out of the same earnest desire to improve the 
Sunday School, a deep and growing interest in the grad- 
ing of the classes and the teaching. But the development 
of the graded system was, and still is, greatly hampered 
by the want of buildings and rooms especially adapted to 
the purpose. 

No adequate building existed till about 1866, when an 
idea which has created a revolution in Sunday School 
architecture, sprang out of the fertile brain of Mr. Lewis 
Miller, the financial founder of the Chautauqua Move- 
ment, as Bishop Vincent was the educational founder. 



260 THE FRONT LINE 

The Sunday School Superintendent put into his Sunday 
School work all his business ability, and that inventive 
power by which he put three hundred and twenty of his 
own patented appliances into a single one of his great 
reaping machines. He was testing that machine on the 
very day I arrived at his house to spend a Sunday at 
Akron, to study the only ideal Sunday School building 
then in the world ; and putting the great reaper and the 
model Sunday School together, I thanked God for the con- 
secrated talents of a business man, who will be remembered 
longer for his Sunday School than by his business inge- 
nuity. He secured the services of Jacob Snyder, an archi- 
tect of Akron, and the result was the Sunday School 
rooms of the first M. E. Church of that city. 

Several examples of this general plan are given below 
to show how widely it can be adapted to differing condi- 
tions and circumstances. The original Akron building 
is in general like the following cut, except that a bal- 
cony is in front of the class rooms instead of the foyer 
in the rear, and there are no sliding doors between the 
Sunday School rooms and the church auditorium. 

B. Rotunda, for the intermediate grades. 

C. Class rooms, each one named after some mission. 
T. Balcony. 

W. Kindergarten and primary rooms, larger than the 
class rooms. 

J. Vestibules. 

E. Library. 

It will be noticed that the partitions of the class rooms 
all radiate from the superintendent's desk, so that he can 
be seen and heard by every one in all the rooms. 

There are two stories of class rooms, the upper one with 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 261 

a balcony in front, into or toward which the scholars can 
come for the devotional exercises. The singing is bet- 
tered by this forward movement of the class. The class 
rooms make an excellent and definite distinction between 
the lower grades and the senior and adult grades, as well 
as between the primary and the intermediate grades. 

The main room is lighted from above, either by a dome 
or skylight or by clerestory windows at the top of the 
room. 

A Modified Akron Plan. — " The necessity of maintaining 
the Sunday School as an auxiliary of the church and as 
a part of the church service, suggested the necessity of 
maintaining the various services in one building, provid- 
ing departments for the accommodation of each, and for 
the purpose of accommodating audiences varying in num- 



First Floor Galleries 

An "Akron" Sunday School room, at rear of auditorium " in combination." 
Note the omission of balcony, and the Foyer passage to class rooms from 
rear. This plan is reproduced by the kind permission of George W. 
Kramer, Architect, No. 1 Madison Avenue, New York. 

bers, so locating the rooms and connecting them that they 
might reinforce each other to their full capacity. This 
principle of advantage — first suggested by Mr. Miller — 
soon assumed tangible form and resulted in the now popu- 
lar combination church, which has been developed in many 
forms." 



262 THE FEONT LINE 

The Sunday School rooms are separated from the 
church auditorium by large sliding doors, so that on 
special occasions the audience room can be almost doubled. 

Changing the balcony from the front to the back of the 
class rooms, brings the scholars in them closer to the 
superintendent without changing the seats. It also en- 
ables the class rooms to be entered without disturbing the 
rest of the school. The Sunday School rooms by this 
arrangement are not so good as an audience room for 
lectures, socials, stereopticon, and other purposes. But 
this arrangement is not an essential part of the com- 
bination plan. 

The combination plan has many advantages, especially 
for small or medium-sized churches. 

Examples of this general plan may be seen in many 
places. For instance, in the large and beautiful First 
Baptist Church at Maiden, Massachusetts, and for a 
charming small church, the Congregational Church in 
Wellesley Hills, near Boston. 

Another form of the combination plan is one "with 
which Lawrence B. Valk, of Los Angeles, California, is 
identified. Among the interesting churches built on 
this plan is a new church in Detroit, Michigan. It cost 
120,000. It is on a lot 110 x 150, and built of pressed 
brick and stone trimmings. It can be said that these 
churches are started with the idea of a distinctly church 
effect. Mr. Valk says, ' I have been guilty of designing 
many of these auditoriums where the pulpit is located in 
the corner, but it is impossible to get a reverent appear- 
ance with a corner pulpit.' In these new plans the inte- 
rior is based on the form of a cross with nave and transept. 
The platform is so located that the speaker commands the 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 



263 



Sunday School as well as the church. On the platform is 
a rood screen with sliding panels. It stands from 12 to 18 
feet high, dividing the church from the Sunday School. 




This plan and description is furnished by the Church Economist, 31 Union 
Square, New York, the most suggestive paper I have ever seen for work- 
ing plans and methods for pastors and churches. 



The Sunday School room is planned with radiating class 
rooms, so that the superintendent's platform is the focus 
of every eye. 

" When the panels of the screen are opened the speaker 
can survey the entire audiences of both rooms with choir 
and organ at his rear. Under the Sunday School are the 
dining halls, kitchen, and toilets. This arrangement will 
be understood more clearly by the accompanying plan." 

A Plan for Remodelling Old Rooms. — There are many 
instances in which the Sunday School and prayer-meeting 



264 



THE FRONT LINE 



rooms are outgrown, but where they can be remodelled 
and adapted to the uses of both in greatly increased use- 
fulness. 

An example is given below of the change made in 
the Congregational chapel at Auburndale, Massachusetts 
(Ward IV of the city of Newton), as one instance of what 
may frequently be done. The former accommodations 
had been outgrown, and were transformed into a suite of 
rooms as nearly like the Akron plan as was possible under 
the circumstances. 




Original Chapel 
S, S. Folding doors. P. Primary room 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 



265 




The Chapel as Remodelled 

B. Bible class room on the main floor, with Primary room and ladies' parlor 

over it. 

C. Six class rooms in two stories. 
S. Stereopticon. 

M. Cornice case for maps, stereopticon curtain, with blackboards beneath. 
P. Piano and orchestra. . 

The added rooms are all separated from the main room 
by sliding or folding doors. 

The light comes from the north windows, cathedral glass 
in the class-room doors, and from a skylight. 

The ceiling was raised a few feet into the slant of the 
roof, in order to give height enough for two stories. 



266 THE FRONT LINE 

The main room, as well as the class rooms, is furnished 
with a table for each class. 

The result has been not only a suite adapted to the 
Sunday School, but a most delightful room for the prayer- 
meeting, Sunday evening services, lectures, socials, and 
committees of every kind. It gives many cosey corners, 
and can be adapted to any size of audience. 

What is needed still is another addition on the north 
side, opening into the main room, but separated by a 
double set of sliding doors to intercept the sounds, for the 
Primary classes, and for the Junior Endeavor, each of 
which needs a permanent room equipped especially for its 
own work. 

Additions for Large Schools. — The Akron model school 
buildings, with many variations in detail, are the best yet 
devised for Sunday Schools of moderate numbers, up to 
several hundreds, and for a considerable proportion of 
scholars in the largest schools. But when a school is 
large enough to make each of the several grades a distinct 
school by itself, with sufficient members to give enthusi- 
asm and interest to each grade without creating a loss in 
others, then certain additional rooms should be provided. 

If the school is small, the separation brings a distinct 
loss, except in the case of the Primary department, which 
cannot do its best work in connection with the main 
school. I have known adult departments to suffer great 
loss, to be disaffected, to lose interest, because they were 
separated from the enthusiasm and methods of a flourish- 
ing Intermediate. 

To quote from an article lately published in the Church 
Economist by Rev. E. Morris Fergusson, the indefatigable 
Sunday School secretary of New Jersey : — 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 267 

" The Junior department is also rapidly coming into 
being under the leadership of primary workers ; and it 
also demands and can profitably use a well-located sepa- 
rate room for the upper years of elementary Bible instruc- 
tion. We have thus in operation a new principle of 
Sunday School work, the curriculum or progressive course 
of study, long advocated and essayed by leading Sunday 
School workers, but here, in the modern, well-organized 
Primary and Junior departments, embodied and standard- 
ized. 

" For the Sunday School work of the incoming genera- 
tion, therefore, we need to evolve a third type of building, 
of which the totally separate and perfectly situated and 
appointed department room shall be the distinctive factor. 
And that the undoubted gain of a periodic joining to- 
gether of all parts in one great assembly may not be lost, 
these department rooms must connect, by wide passages 
and easy stairs, with that adequate, appropriate, and 
worshipfully suggestive gathering-place, the church audi- 
torium ; which might, by means of a solid but movable 
partition, be made capable of enlargement for such special 
occasions." 

Three plans of these large schools are given below. 

The Kumler Memorial. 

This building is for a school with an enrolment of over 
1000 members. 

The Intermediate department is over the Junior, and 
the Senior over the Primary. 

It will be noted from the plan on page 268 that it is built 
on the plan of segregation of its seven departments, no 
two of which can be thrown together. Its Primary and 
Junior departments can care for about 200 scholars each, 



268 



THE FRONT LINE 



the Intermediate and Senior about 175 each. The Adult 
department can accommodate about 350 at one time, while 
the Normal department will hold 75, and the Chinese 50. 




KUMLER MEMORIALS. S. BUILDING— GROUND FLOOR. 
East Liberty Presbyterian Church, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. 



When asked for his reasons for this segregation of de- 
partments Mr. Samuel E. Gill, the superintendent, replied 
to the Pennsylvania Herald : — 

(1) " The trend of improvement in teacher training and 
Sunday School methods is in the line of specialization and 
separation, so as to adapt the entire service to the age 
and capacity of the pupil. Logically we should follow 
the same plan in our Sunday School architecture. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 269 

(2) " This plan enlists and develops a larger number 
of workers, making a more efficient force for the advance- 
ment of the Kingdom. 

(3) " In large schools it enables the officers to main- 
tain easily a much closer supervision of the work, secures 
better order, saves time, tends to thoroughness, and can be 
adapted to small schools to their very great advantage." 

Model Plan Combining all Departments. 

The arrangement is such that all the departments, as 
well as the class rooms, can be thrown together and 
every scholar be within view of the superintendent's 
desk. 

The church auditorium is separated from the Sunday 
School room by a wide partition of sliding doors, which 
can be entirely removed from sight. 

The class rooms A, B, C, D on the lower floor are en- 
closed by portieres, making the main room, when desired, 
one open unobstructed auditorium. 

The class rooms in the gallery (except E and F) are 
separated alternately with solid and with removable parti- 
tions, so that each pair can be thrown together for a large 
class if required, while in each one there is solid wall space 
for maps, blackboards, pictures, etc. 

The kindergarten and primary rooms can be shut off 
from the main room by double sliding doors. All sliding 
doors to be sound proof. 

Each department, the kindergarten, the primary, the 
upper and the lower senior rooms, and the upper series of 
class rooms, has its own separate exit independent of the 
main room. 

The main room is equipped with chairs and tables for 
each class, and is lighted by a skylight. 



270 



THE EKONT LINE 



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A model plan for Sunday School rooms, by C. H. Blackall, architect, 
120 Beacon St., Boston. 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 



271 



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A model plan for Sunday School rooms, by C. H. Blackall, architect, 
120 Beacon St., Boston. 



272 



THE FRONT LINE 



Separate Department Plan with Combinations. 




Ground Floor Galleries and Class Rooms 

Plan of separate department Sunday School room, by George W. Kramer, 
architect, New York. 

In this plan all the departments open together in one 
large room. 

Each department has its own class rooms. 

The first floor is given entirely to the children; while the 
seniors are all in the second story in four departments, with 
sliding doors in front, except the large Bible-class room. 

The largest Sunday School in the World, in the largest 
Sunday School building in the world, holding a member- 
ship of over 5000, is the Stockport Sunday School, in 
Stockport, a large city near Manchester, England. It 
stands on a hill in the centre of the city, and for more than 
a hundred years has been the Sunday School for all the 
children of the city of all denominations. There are a 
very large number of rooms, each the home of a separate 
class. There are larger rooms containing several classes. 
There is a great hall in which once a quarter the whole 
school assembles for general exercises. It is a kind of 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 273 

"Institutional Sunday School," with improvement socie- 
ties, libraries, teachers' meetings, and a great variety of 
interesting and peculiar methods. I know of no other 
instance where the Sunday School is the most prominent 
religious institution, if not institution of any kind, in a 
city of 100,000 inhabitants, and of which it could be said 
that " Sunday School scholars are the staple product of 
Stockport." 

Class rooms. See one described on page 52. 

Raised seats like those in rear galleries are used in some 
schools in the second story but not generally, because 
while they are excellent when used as galleries to an 
audience room, they are not convenient for class rooms. 
They are sometimes used with good effect in Primary 
rooms, as, for instance, in the Sunday School at Stockport, 
England. 

Partitions between class rooms are a matter of some 
importance. 

1. Solid walls as usual in a house. The special advan- 
tages are that they prevent the class from hearing what is 
going on in the next room. 

They make a homelike room, which can be used for 
class meetings, etc. 

They give the best opportunity for maps, charts, black- 
boards, pictures, and book-racks for singing-books and 
Bibles, and all that is needed for the best teaching. 

2. Rolling partitions, simple, enabling two rooms to be 
joined in one when a larger room is needed. Sometimes 
these are very useful, provided only two rooms adjoining 
are thus separated. 

These partitions may be made to roll up or sideways, as 
most convenient. 



274 THE FRONT LINE 

Class-room doors. 

1. In some cases the class rooms on the lower floor 
have no doors but are open recesses of the larger room. 
For instance, the great Bushwick Avenue M. E. Sunday 
School. 

2. Rolling partitions, rolling up and down, or sideways, 
easy, simple, comparatively inexpensive, but allowing no 
light to come through for the main room. 

The same, made with blackboard surface. Easily oper- 
ated and durable. 

3. Portieres or curtains, which fairly well exclude the 
sounds of the main room, as in two schools in Brockton, 
Massachusetts, and the Congregational school in Mont- 
clair, New Jersey. 

4. Shades on rollers, like window shades, only larger, 
large enough to cover the whole front of the room. Made 
of the same color as the tinting of the walls, they have 
much the same effect as part of the walls of the room. 
For example, the new Congregational Church of Nashua, 
New Hampshire. 

5. Double folding doors, the panels of which are of 
cathedral or other kinds of glass which give light, but as 
also in the following methods. 

6. Patent sliding and folding doors and partitions, 
easily operated, and requiring no pocket, and occupying 
almost none of the front space, are announced by Roof & 
Co., Franklin, Ohio. 

7. Sliding doors made in several ingenious ways, some- 
times running into pockets, sometimes moving toward one 
side, and filling up a small part of the space. 

8. Window partitions, hung like the windows of a 
house, but wider. Sometimes they run below into the 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 



275 



cellar, sometimes up into the attic, more often, divided 
into three sashes, they are raised up side by side to the 
top of the room, and hide the view from none. 

These are best when they do not occupy the whole front, 
but a single door for easy entrance fills up the space at one 
side. This side door is a great convenience in all cases. 
In sliding or folding doors one of these takes the place of 
a separate door. 

In all cases there should be ventilating windows over 
the whole front. 




Class Rooms made by Portieres. — A number of Sunday 
Schools make their class rooms by means of large, elon- 
gated semicircles of iron piping, on which are hung por- 
tieres or curtains, something after the accompanying plan. 
When the curtains are drawn back during the opening 
and closing exercises, there is one large, open room. 
During class study the curtains are drawn around the 



276 THE FRONT LINE 

classes, and they are enabled to pursue their work undis- 
turbed. These may be arranged in almost any room. 
They are said to be very satisfactory. The chief diffi- 
culty lies in the lack of the class home-feeling, and the 
absence of the best opportunity for the various maps, 
blackboards, and other equipment that the teacher needs. 

Excellent examples may be found in the Congregational 
Church at Campello and the new M. E. Church of Brock- 
ton, Massachusetts. 

Class-room Substitutes. — Where there is no opportu- 
nity for a full class-room equipment, there are substitutes 
of great value used in the ordinary simple rooms in the 
basement of the church. Some cosey nook or corner may 
be secluded by the portiere arrangement, either on the 
iron piping frame, or on simple wires strung across the 
main room, as is done, at least was done a few years ago, 
in the great Sunday School of Mr. Moody's church in 
Chicago. In not a few Sunday Schools folding screens 
are used for separating the classes. 

The Seating. — Chairs are the best for all purposes. 
There are several kinds which have book-racks and places 
underneath for hats. Where settees are used, some of 
them should be reversible and some should be short, so 
that the classes can be gathered around a common centre. 
Where there is no carpet, the chairs can easily be made 
noiseless by rubber tips. 

Tables. — One of the greatest physical aids for the 
teacher is a table around which his class gathers as a 
focus. It should have a drawer deep and large enough 
to contain books, pencils, paper blocks, chalk, maps, and 
anything the teacher needs in his work. They are espe- 
cially useful as a kind of desk, on which he can place his 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 277 

Bible, Quarterly, written notes, etc., so as to leave his 
hands perfectly free for the teaching process. Some, in- 
stead of a drawer, have the top hinged, with a receptacle 
beneath. This gives more room, but is not quite so con- 
venient as a drawer. Tables are made round or square 
or oblong. The latter kinds are more easily stowed away 
around the sides or in some corner, when the rooms are 
used for other purposes. These tables are of special use 
in sociables and receptions, as, for instance, to the Home 
Department. A prominent teacher once said to me that 
if she were compelled to make the choice, she would 
rather have a table without a class room than a class 
room without a table. 

Blackboards are essential for many purposes. While 
the puzzle and alliterative methods of blackboard use are 
wisely declining, there is an increased use for notices, 
diagrams, records, subjects, reviews, etc. They are use- 
ful also for prayer-meetings, missionary meetings, Chris- 
tian Endeavor, and in many cases. 

Every class room should have one, in addition to more 
than one in the main room. 

Portable blackboards of many sizes and arrangements 
for holding are very common. 

But a series of boards behind the superintendent's desk 
is a far superior arrangement. These must run up and 
down in grooves, like window sashes. 

The simplest arrangement consists of two boards con- 
nected by cords running over pulleys, so that when one 
goes up the other comes down. The writing is done 
within reach of the platform, and then the board is drawn 
up within sight of the whole school. 

Another beautiful arrangement is that of the Dwight 



278 THE FRONT LINE 

Place Congregational Church at New Haven, Connecti- 
cut, where, in a panel behind the desk, are four large 
crayon boards, black, blue, green, and ground glass, hung 
like separate window sashes, any one of which can be 
brought into view at pleasure. 

A very good arrangement especially for class rooms con- 
sists of two medium-sized blackboards hinged together, 
one of which is screwed to the wall. In this way there 
are three boards in the space of one, and when open the 
blackboard space is doubled. 

Endless Flexible Blackboards are by far the most con- 
venient of the portable blackboards. They consist of an 
endless wide band of blackboard cloth running over 
rollers at the top and bottom. Whatever is written on 
these can be moved up to the top in full sight, or run 
over behind out of sight. It gives double the amount 
of surface of an ordinary board. These blackboards are 
made in many styles and arrangements, walls on portable 
frames, and in a folding arrangement for lecturers to 
carry with them. These light arrangements are equally 
good and more convenient for common portable use. 
(American Blackboard Company, St. Louis.) 

Maps and charts are best arranged on spring rollers in a 
cornice case which hides the maps when rolled up, but allows 
perfect ease in drawing down whichever one is needed. 

Special Arrangements. — The following description from 
the Congregationalist is fuller than the notes I took when 
I visited the new D wight Place Sunday School rooms at 
New Haven, Connecticut : — 

" Among the features are many wonderful contents of 
that double wall, which, like a magician's palace, opens its 
treasures to the touch of secret springs. In the middle 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 



279 



are four large crayon boards, which may be drawn out 
at the will of the operator, — black, blue, green, or ground 
glass. Above this is a frame where nestle wonderful 
charts and song rolls, and to the right a large closet where 
are stored more song rolls hung conveniently for refer- 
ence, and drawers for collections, books, and records. 
Here is a panel which swings down and becomes a baize 
board adjustable at any height or angle, and beside it a 
secret treasure house of objects and figures to be exhibited 
on it. On the other side a similar panel miraculously 
transforms itself into a sand table, and adjoining it a 
cupboard has galvanized iron drawers rilled with damp 
clay and sand which may be used *to illustrate anything 
from creation to the final judgment. Other panels con- 
ceal the music, the many-colored crayons and all possible 
devices to interest and instruct the little folks, who must 
come to regard this room as a veritable paradise." 

Some of these may be found in the Westminster Pres- 
byterian Church in Bloomfield, New Jersey, together with 
a special interesting arrangement of sliding doors. 

The Newspaper Exchange is a table with raised edges, 
placed in some convenient place in the vestibule or other 
entrance to the Sunday School rooms. Over it is placed 
in large letters — 



NEWSPAPER EXCHANGE 



Please bring the Religious papers, magazines, 
books, pamphlets 



Take Freely Whatever You Wish 



280 THE FRONT LINE 

This is free to everybody. The previous week's reli- 
gious papers and good magazines of the previous month 
are brought in. 

Once a month or so the young lady who has it in charge 
sends whatever is left to the hospitals or poorhouse or 
the places where men are at leisure waiting for work, as 
at engine houses, electric-car stations, etc. 

Attendance Tablets are sometimes made permanent on 
one side of a blackboard. In other cases they are fixed 
separately upon the wall. There are several varieties of 
these, as well as of Cradle Rolls. 

Reference Library. — This should be in the main room, 
free of access, never locked, with a supply of cards on 
which any one who takes a book writes his name and the 
date. It contains books on the Sunday School, on Teach- 
ing, on Missions, on Christian Endeavor, on the Bible, 
Cyclopedias, Concordance, Commentaries, etc. It should 
always be replenished whenever a new portion of the 
Bible is to be studied. 

Bible Museum. — It would be a good thing for every 
school to get together whatever from Oriental countries 
illustrates the Bible. In many cases there are imitation 
coins, collections of seeds, woods, and flowers from Pales- 
tine, models of ancient tombs, of the Tabernacle and the 
Temple, like Fisher's model of Herod's Temple, with full 
description. One can gradually assemble many illustra- 
tive objects, as sandals, rolls, phylacteries, shepherd's rod 
and staff, clay tablets, seals, coins, grains, woods, ploughs, 
winnowing fans, etc. I find a great many times when 
I can bring to the Sunday School from my collection 
objects of interest that illustrate the lesson. 

A Stereopticon is a good means of instructing and inter- 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 281 

esting the children, and older people as well. It can be 
a permanent fixture, and wherever there is electricity, it 
can be run with ease at mid-day, and with real success. 
The oxyhydrogen lamps will also show pictures at the 
noon session, but require more care in the using. Mis- 
sionary meetings, and special services and reviews, can 
use this instrument with great advantage. 

Pictures. — The Sunday School room will be made more 
attractive, as well as helpful, by means of Bible pictures 
on the walls. A dado of the penny pictures can make a 
permanent history of the life of Christ, or of the Acts, or 
of the Old Testament story, around the main room, or 
any class room, but especially the Primary rooms. They 
can be, if desired, formed gradually as the lessons progress. 
W. A. Wilde and Company have a fine and growing se- 
lection of the best pictures illustrating the Bible. 

The Wilde colorgraphs of great paintings are very 
beautiful for this purpose. A border of the Detroit col- 
ored photographs of Palestine scenes around one of my 
study doors has been greatly admired. The Sunday 
School, next to his own home, should be the most attrac- 
tive and homelike place the child knows. 

The Card System of Enrolment is the most convenient 
and time-saving method. " It is especially handy and 
time-saving in looking up statistics or keeping track of 
the active membership. All absentees or non-residents 
can be grouped by themselves, and the different grades 
may be classified by using cards of different colors, as 
white for Primary, buff for Intermediate, and blue for 
Senior members." The Pilgrim Press, Boston, furnishes 
an excellent outfit. 

For Individual Classes, both at the school or at class 



282 THE FRONT LINE 

gatherings during the week, there are many interesting 
helps which can combine interest with instruction in the 
Bible. 

Stereoscopic Photographs are again becoming popular, 
because the pictures are incomparably better than those 
of a few years ago. They are such lifelike representa- 
tions of the places where our Lord lived and walked and 
taught, the figures and the scenes are brought out so 
clearly, that it is almost the same as if we were actually 
travelling in the Holy Land. People are more and more 
waking up to the likeness of the experiences that may be 
gained in the stereoscope to those gained by viewing them 
on the spot. The Underwoods of New York have some 
special features in this line. 

Games, such as the Game of the Kings of the Jews (C. F. 
Marston, Worcester, Massachusetts), and Games of Bible 
Characters (Colby, Chicago), will in a few evenings give 
a better preparation than years of ordinary Bible study 
under any system of lessons in the Sunday School half 
hour, for such Bible knowledge as is given in the favorite 
tests which show up the ignorance of the Bible among the 
young people of to-day. 

The Royal Scroll accomplishes the same purpose of 
intimate acquaintance with the facts and characters of the 
Bible, for the family circle and meetings of the class. I 
know children who have actually worn one out by con- 
stant and interested use. It is an ingenious and complete 
arrangement of maps, colored pictures, charts, descriptive 
of customs and modes of dress in Palestine, and an illumi- 
nated Life of Christ. Bishop Vincent voices the senti- 
ment of many when he says : " It is a picture gallery, a 
panorama, a guide to sacred geography, a treasury of 



SUNDAY SCHOOL ROOMS AND EQUIPMENT 283 

sacred art, a text-book, an atlas, a lesson-help, all in one. 
It is the most ingenious, charming, and complete appa- 
ratus ever offered for the home." 

Teachers' Roll of Bible Illustrations embodies in an ex- 
cellent form, for use in the Sunday School class, the long 
list of illustrations made for Eyre and Spottiswoode's 
famous Variorum Bible. 

Working Methods. — For a large number of administra- 
tive methods, and specimens of printed matter in actual 
use in progressive Sunday Schools, in various parts of the 
country, such as " Ways of awakening and maintaining 
interest in Bible study," " Ways of securing regular and 
punctual attendance," "Ways of reaching and securing 
new scholars," " Ways of securing Church attendance," 
etc., see Mead's Modern Methods in Sunday School. 

Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, the lamp of 
Sacrifice, the lamp of Truth, the lamp of Power, the lamp 
of Beauty, the lamp of Life, the lamp of Memory, the 
lamp of Obedience, are excellent lamps, in the light of 
which Sunday School architecture may attain its highest 
usefulness and glory. 



INDEX 



"A diamond in the rough" . . . . 

Advantages of the International System 

Adverse circumstances, good results . . 

.lEschines : reply to Demosthenes . . 

" A fleck of rust on a flawless blade " . 

Agitation, Value of 

" A great meeting, a king to select " 

Aim of the Sunday School 

Akron plan : S. S. buildings 

Akron plan modified 261- 

American Bible League, The .... 

American Revision, The 

Application of the lesson, Methods of . 

Application, Personal, to scholar alone . 

Aristotle on learning by teaching . . . 

Arnold : Light of Asia 

Arnold of Rugby 

Art of teaching, Teacher trained in the . 

Assistant teacher, Who is my .... 

Authorized Version, The 

Axtell : Organized Sunday School . . 

" A worn-out Dogma died " . . • . 

Baraca Movement, The 

Best machinery for education of chil- 
dren 

Bible History as affected by the Higher 
Criticism 

Bible Museum 

Bibles and Quarterlies in the class . . 

Bibles for children 

Bibles, Marvellous increase of ... . 

Bible study by the historic method . . 

Bible study in different languages . . . 

Bible study : the magnet method . . . 

Bible Study Union System 

Bible Teachers' Training School . . . 

Bible, The : abiding in its character- 
forming elements 

Biblical allusions in literature .... 

Black, Rev. Hugh, on Will-training . . 

Blackall, C. H., Architect. Plans 269- 

Blackall, C. R., D.D., new courses . . 
Ibid., Our Sunday School Work 

Blackboards 

Boer War, Story of 

Briscoe, Rev. J. T., on the S. S. System 
of to-day 

Brown, Marianna C, Ph.D., on produc- 
ing religious impression. In S. S. 
Movements in America .... 

Bryce on the Constitution of the U.S. . 

Burton and Mathews, Profs. : Prin- 
ciples and Ideals . . . 91, 139, 

Busy Men and Women : How they can 
best prepare their S. 8. lesson . . 

Butler, Dean Alford A., D.D., on know- 
ing men as well as books .... 
Ibid., on worship in the S. S. . . . 

Capen, Hon. S. B., on the character- 
forming power of the teacher's life . 



Card system of enrolment 281 

Caricatures of the Sunday School ... 92 
Carlyle on enthusiasm : (Frederick 

the Great) 18 

Ibid., on the personal power of the 

teacher 105 

Cathedral glass, The glory of old . . . 210 

Changes : not too sudden 25 

Character-forming truths 103 

Characteristics of best lesson system . 154 

Character-training 103 

Cheyne : objects of the Higher Criticism 198 
Chicago University Press, Graded 

Course . 142 

Children need the best equipment . . 253 
Choice, Supreme, determines character . 97 
Choice, The Supreme, made in view of 

some small act 100 

Christian Endeavor 13, 193 

Church, a power-house 102 

Churches and Sunday Schools should 

have the best equipment in the 

community 253 

Clark, Rev. F. E., D.D. : his welcomes . 52 

Classes, Number in 32 

Classes, Value of small 115 

Class, Good order in 57 

Class, How to govern a 56 



Class-room doors and partitions 
Class rooms : a picture of one . 
Class rooms, by portieres . . . 
Class rooms, Substitutes for 
Class, Work for, outside of the S. S. 
Coe, Prof. : test of College students 
Colored photographs of Holy Land 
Colorgraphs of celebrated paintings 
" Come and wander with me" . . 
Conservative vs. Radical .... 
Constructive Bible Studies . . 
Convention at Jerusalem : resolution 

on teacher-training 

Correspondence Schools 

Courses of lectures in churches . . . 

Courses of study 139, 

Courses of study for teacher-training 
Criticism a sign of progress . . . .22, 180 
Criticism of the Sunday School, Value of 21 

Cross-fertilization 14 

Crypt Conference, The : Addresses . .109 
Crystallizing thought by talking ... 88 
Curtis, Geo. William: Prue and I . . 207 

Decision day 64, 100 

De Garmo : Interest in Education . . 41 
Delitzsch, Prof., Babel und Bibel . .211 
Departmental S. S. rooms . . . 266-272 

Departments vs. courses 131 

Devotional exercises . . • 33 

Devotional reading of S. S. lesson . . . 74 
Diagrams of modern S. S. rooms . 261-272 
Diatessarons of the Gospels ..... 250 



5,274 
. . 52 
274, 275 
. . 275 
. . 59 
163 
281 
281 



25 

142 

91 
193 
193 
144 

119 



284 



INDEX 



285 



Dickens's Skitzlanders 27 

" Dig channels for the stream of Love " 124 

Discouraged teacher, The 67 

Driver, Prof., on Old Testament history 199 
Drummond, Prof. Henrv, on the aim of 

the Sunday School 97 

D wight Place Sunday School .... 278 

Education and the new life 98 

Education for the educator 90 

Eiffel Tower, Vision from 118 

Eliot, Pres., on the teacher problem . . 91 
Emerson on " glittering generalities " . 90 
Encouragement for those who have few 

advantages 254 

Enrolment, Card system of 281 

Enthusiasm for education 18 

Episcopal Ch., Textbooks and systems . 155 

Epworth Leagues 193 

Equipment of the Sunday School . . . 252 

Evolution of God's people 216 

Examination tests 167 

Exhibits, Value of 258 

Experiments : percentage that succeed . 14 
Extension courses for lay students . . 191 
Farrar on Urim and Thummim . . . 230 
Fergusson, Rev. E. Morris, on gradation 129 

Ibid., on S. S. progress 185 

Ibid., on S. S. rooms 266 

Fine churches and poor S. S. rooms . . 252 
Fiske, John : Critical Period of United 

States History 44 

Ibid., Story of rising and setting sun 44 
Flexibility of the Sunday School ... 39 
Forbush, W. B. : The Boy Problem . 32, 99 
Forefathers of Boston and religious edu- 
cation 95 

" For the heart grows rich in giving " . 124 

Fountain Experiment, My 71 

Framework of the lesson, How to make 80 

Frog, Experiment with a 101 

Front Line, The: definition 11 

Front Line, Power of the 13,16 

Games for Bible study 282 

Gates of Paradise, Fragments of . . . 37 
Geography, Use of, in teaching . . 81-83 
Gideon and his three hundred .... 83 

"Give us the music" 67 

Goethe's Tale of Tales 226 

Good results under disadvantages . 53, 254 
Gordon, Rev. A. J., D.D. : Dream in 
How Christ came to Church . . 93 

Graded, Pupils are to be 128 

Graded, Teachers to be 130 

Grades must be flexible 136 

Grading, A study in 125 

Grading by the Grammar School grades 136 

Grading, Necessity for 125 

Grading, Schemes of 132 

Grading, What is 127 

Grading, What is new in 125 

Gratuitous instruction, Value of . . . 112 
Greek legend of the founding of Thebes 218 
Green : History of the English People 16 
Groser, W. H. : Hundred Years' Work 

for the Children 108 

Grown people, Inducing, to attend S. S. 134 



Gulick, Prof. L. H., on the character- 
forming power of the teacher's life . 104 
" Gyascutus has broke loose, The " . . 200 
Hadley, Pres. Arthur T., on the personal 

power of the teacher 105 

Hale, Rev. E. E. : famous bon mot . . 181 

Ibid., How Christ came to Boston . 93 
Hamill, Prof. H. M. : TheS.S. Teacher 123 
Harris, W. T.: experiments in education 14 

Ibid., Self-activity in education . . . 102 
Haslett : Pedagogical Bible School . 128 
Hawthorne : 3Iossesfrom an Old Manse 105 

Ibid., Story of the birthmark . . .138 
Health catching instead of disease . . 106 
Helps, Arthur : Friends in Council . 179 

Helps, True use of 75-79, 157 

Higher Criticism, Attitude of the S. S. to 205 
Higher Criticism, The present situation 197 
Historic method of Bible study . . . 196 

Historic method, Value of 208 

History of mankind an evolution . . .215 
Hittite sacred stone at Hamath .... 196 
Hodge, R. M., D.D. : extension courses 191 
Holmes, O. W. : Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table 86,235 

Ibid., on analogies in nature . . . 235 

Ibid., the three Johns and Thomases 225 

Home Department 38 

Home, Prof. : Philosophy of Education 17 

Ibid., on progress in knowledge . . 17 
House claimed by a thief in Palestine . 175 

Ideals, The power of 19 

Ideal version of the Bible 250 

" If I could see as in truth they be " . . 225 
" If only we strive to be pure and true " 118 
Ignorance of the Bible and its remedy . 159 

Index Bible, The 237 

Ingelow, The Monitions of the Unseen 206 
Interest in Bible study, Signs of growing 179 

Interest in education 40 

Interlinear Parallel Bible, Holman . . 246 
International Bible Reading Association 191 
International Executive Committee, Ex- 
tensive organization of 183 

International Lessons, a connected 

scheme 152 

International Lessons, graded in material 

as well as treatment 150 

International Les. Sys. : What is the 

139, 148 
International System, Advantages of . . 153 
International System, Criticism of . 140, 144 
Introducing a new measure, Best way of 13 
" It might have been worse " .... 148 
" I wonder if he remembers " .... 68 
James, Prof. William : applying the lesson 66 

Ibid., Psychology 66 

Ibid., Talks to Teachers on Psychol- 
ogy 66 

Kant's Educational Theory .... 114 
Keedy, Rev. J. L., on a graded curriculum 158 

Kelman's The Holy Land 175 

Kramer, Geo. A., Architect. Plans 261, 272 
Kumler Memorial S. S. rooms .... 267 

Learning by heart 230 

Lectures on the Bible, Courses of . . . 193 



286 



INDEX 



Leigh Hunt : The Indicator .... 156 
Lesson, Forming the plan of the ... 84 
Lessons graded in material and treatment 128 

Literary study of the Bible 222 

Literary test in Select Notes .... 168 
Lutheran General Council, graded system 141 
Maclaren, Ian, in the British Weekly . 5 

Madame Roland on liberty 207 

Magazine articles, How to use .... 237 
Magnetic, Making the mind . . . . . 87 

Maps and charts 81, 278 

Margins, Use of, in the Bible .... 236 
Marvellous work with poor machinery . 254 

Matthew Arnold : poem 19 

McCabe, Chaplain : letter to Ingersoll . 193 
McKinney, A. H., Ph.D., on great learn- 
ing vs. the art of teaching .... 109 
Mead's Modern Methods in S. S. Work 68 

Meigs, Rev. CD.: poem 59 

" Meine Trubsal war mein Gliick " . . 40 
Memorizing the Scriptures, Value of 232-234 
" Men take the pure ideals of their souls " 20 
Meredith, Margaret, on grown people 

and the Sunday School 134 

Merriam, Prof. Alexander R., on religious 
impression in the Sunday School . 61 

Methods of Bible Study 195 

Miller, Hugh : My Schools and School- 
masters 48 

Miller, Lewis, inventor of Akron plan . 259 
Model Sunday School buildings .... 259 
Modern American Bible, The, . . . 248 
Modern methods, Mead's collection of . 283 
Modern Reader's Bible, The .... 246 

Moral mothering 114 

Moulton, Prof. Richard G. : Modern 

Reader's Bible 78, 222, 246 

Mr. Titbottom's Spectacles 207 

Munsterberg, Prof.: American Traits 91 
" My double and how he undid me " . . 50 
Nash, Prof. Henry S. : History of the 

Higher Criticism 200 

Near-sighted spectacles 226 

Newspaper Exchange 279 

New Testament in Modern English . 249 
New Testament in Modern Speech . . 248 
Next step forward in religious education 183 

Old buildings improved 258 

One child or two adults 253 

Ordinary person, Power of the .... 48 

Organized classes 31 

Oriental Potentate, Dream of .... 25 

Original, How to become 79 

*' O that I knew how all thy lights " . .222 
Parables of the Pounds and the Talents 71 

Paragraphing the Bible 244 

Paralyzed in the realm of motives . . . 102 
Parkhurst, Dr. C. H., on the personal 

power of the teacher 105 

Partitions between class rooms . . . 273 
Patterson Du Bois: The Point of Con- 
tact in Teaching 5 

Patton, Pres. F. L., on Biblical criticism 189 
Payson on the blessedness of preaching . 69 
Pennsylvania State S. S. Association, 
Manual of 131 



Persian princes, Training of .... 105 

Personally conducted 77 

Pictures, Wilde's penny 281 

Plans for large schools 266-272 

Plans for small schools 261-265 

Polyglot Bibles 249 

Portieres for class rooms 279 

Preparation of the teacher, Need of . .45 
Preparing the lesson, Time-saving pro- 
cess in 73 

Preston, Mrs. Margaret : poem ... 20 
Prince, John T., Massachusetts Board of 

Education, on order in the S. S. . 65 
Proctor, Prof. Richard A. : Familiar 

Science Studies 35 

Pycroft on reading English history . . 250 

Queen Bee : how evolved 180 

Ramsay, Prof. Win. M./ on holding fast 

to the scientific principle .... 214 
Rappacini's daughter, Story of ... . 105 
Reading the Bible through . . . 177, 220 
" Reels not in storm of warring words" 212 

Reference Library 118, 280 

Religious Education Ass'n. 143, 154, 186-188 
Religious impression, How to effect . . 61 
Remodelled S. S. rooms .... 263-266 
Renan on the twentieth century ... 16 

Resolve, Acting on 67 

" Restless Club, The " 21 

Revelation, Different effects of, when 
based on myth and on fact .... 203 

Reviews 35 

Revised Version of the Bible .... 241 
Revisions, Hindrances to the popular 

acceptance of 243 

Revivals, Necessity of . 101 

Roads, Rev. Charles, on graded teachers 131 
Rogers, Prof, on Babel und Bibel . .211 

Rolling partitions 273 

Rome on the parlor floor 82 

Rooms for the Sunday School, The best 252 
Roosevelt, Pres. : address to a school . 97 

Royal scroll, The 282 

Ruskin : Modem Painters 40 

Ibid., on public buildings .... 256 

Ibid., on word study 228 

Ibid., Sesame and Lilies .... 228 

Ibid., Experience in reading Bible . . 233 

Sanders, Prof., on the aim of the S. S. . 97 

Sanderson, Prof., on character-forming . 99 

Schauffler, Rev. A. F., D.D. : Pastoral 

Leadership of the S. S. . 49, 165, 170 

Ibid., Ways of Working 138 

Schemes of grading 132 

Scholarly vs. the teaching temperament 4 
Scholars : getting to study the lesson . 58 
School of Christ, Apostles in the . . .107 
Schools and schoolmasters, My . . . . 6, 7 
Scripture, Prof. E. W. : Thinking, Feel- 
ing, Doing 101 

Search, Prof. Preston W. : The Ideal 

School 14, 136 

Seating of the Sunday School . . . . 276 
Seeing visions and dreaming dreams . . 18 
Seeley, Prof. L. : Foundation of Edu- 
cation * . . 57, 90 



INDEX 



287 



Prof. L. . on good order ... 57 
Seven fears changed into seven joys . . 179 
Shakespeare class, Methods of .... 88 
Signs of the times, hopeful for the S. S. 21 
Silliman, Prof., Story concerning ... 16 
Skim-milk transformed into cream . . 94 
Slocum, Pres. Wm. F., advice to visitors 

to St. Louis fair 221 

Smith, Prof. Geo. Adam, Historical 

Geography of the Holy Land . . 83. 
Ibid., Modern Criticism and the 

Preaching of the Old Testament . 204 
Ibid., Effect of the Higher Criticism . 197 
Smith, Rev. Wm. Walter, M.D., Sunday 

School Teaching 155 

Special S. S. arrangements 278 

Spencer, Herbert, Social Statics ... 98 
Stalker, Rev. James, D.D., The 
Preacher and his Models .... 122 

Statistics, Misleading 181 

Stead, If Christ came to Chicago . . 93 

Stereographs 282 

Stereopticon for the Sunday School . . 281 
St. John, Prof. E. P., on grading . 126, 128 

Stockport Sunday School 272 

Study of particular books or periods . . 225 
Summer Assemblies and Schools . . . 193 
Sunday School a Missionary School . . 39 
Sunday School and the Home . . 37, 116 
Sunday School an evangelizing power . 41 
Sunday School buildings, Akron plan . 259 

Sunday School Cooperation 36 

Sunday School for the whole church . . 28 
Sunday School, largest in the world . . 272 

S. 8. rooms and equipment 252 

S. S. rooms: modified Akron plan . . 261 
Sunday School steadily increasing in 

numbers 181 

Sunday School, Supreme aim of, Teacher- 
training depends on 96 

Sunday School teacher, Training for . .103 
Sun. Sch. the right hand of the church . 42 
Supplemental lessons and reviews ... 35 
Swift, Dean : Illustration on reform . . 126 

Tables for classes 276 

Ta pathemata mathemata 71 

Teacher and his class 47 

Teachers, Concerning paid Ill 

Teachers in the S. S., Who should be 11 1, 113 

Teachers' meetings 88, 121 

Teachers' meetings, Mr. Chas. G. Trum- 
bull's plan for 122 

Teacher's Pastorate, The 31 

Teachers, Poor: What to do with them 117 
Teacher's preparation, Necessity of . . 72 

Teacher's, tools, The 52 

Teacher trained in knowledge of Bible . 108 

Teacher-training 90 

Teacher-training, Growing interest in . 95 
Teacher-training in the art of teaching . 108 
Teacher-training in study of the child . 109 
Teacher-training, Present status of . . 92 
Teacher-training, The church should pro- 
vide the means for 118 

Teacher-training, The kind of, depends 
on the aim of the Sunday School . 95 



Teaching, Learning by 123 

Teaching, Two mental processes in . . 54 

Temple Bible, The 247 

Tennyson : The Ancient Sage . . .212 
Test of a Bible class in the Olivet 8. S. .164 
Test of Bible knowledge by Dr. Munhall 172 
Test of Bible knowledge by Pres. 

Thwing 160 

Test of boys in New York City . . .171 
Test of college students by Prof. Coe . 163 
Test of students at Hampton .... 163 
Tests, False, of a system . . . . 173-177 
" There breaks a yet more glorious day " 194 
"They must upward still and onward" 23 
" This maple ridge shall Horeb be " . . 84 
Thomas, Mr. Joseph C. : The Index 

Bible 237 

Thwing, Pres. Charles F., on the best 
thing college does for a man . . . 105 

Tom Brown at Oxford SO 

Training by specimen teaching . . . 119 
Training of teachers, Provision made for 31 

Training of the will 99 

Trench, Archbishop : poem 124 

Triumph of the right spirit over obstacles 255 
Trumbull, Charles G. : S. S. Times . . 122 
Twentieth Century New Testament . 247 
Two camels, Browning's parable of the . 75 
Tyng, Rev. Stephen, D.D., address in 
H. W. Beecher's church .... 253 

Unconscious cerebration • 85 

United States Bureau of Education : Re- 
port on Sunday Schools 112 

Urim and Thummim : " Lights and 

Truths" 230 

Valk, Lawrence B., Architect: Plan . . 262 
Vincent, Bp.: The Modem Sunday 

School 83, 120 

Vincent, Prof. Marvin R. : That Mon- 
ster the Higher Critic 200 

Waters, Mr. Charles, Hon. Sec. of the 

International Bible Readers' Assoc. 191 
Wells, Prof. A. R. : S. S. Success . . 76, 86 
Wendell Phillips, on agitation .... 213 
What Christ would see in the S. S. . . 94 
White, Wilbert W., D.D.: Bible Teach- 
ers' Training School 190 

Whitney, Prof. H. M. : Bible translations 239 

Ibid., paragraphing the Bible . . . 244 

Ibid., personal power of the teacher . 105 

Whittier: Chapel of the Hermits . . 83 

Will, The training of the 99-102 

Wilson, Pres. Robert: Biblical criticism 189 
Wood, Prof. Irving F., on grading . . 133 
Word studies, Examples of . . . 228-229 
Word studies : The Literary man's way 228 
Word studies : The Mining way . . .228 
Word studies : The Poet's way . . . 227 
Word studies : The Scientist's way . . 227 
Working methods, in Mead's Modern 

Methods 283 

Wright, William Burnet, D.D. : Master 

and Men 229 

Young Churchman Co. : graded courses 141 
Young Men's Christian Associations . 192 
Young People's Unions 193 



REVISED AND ENLARGED 



WAYS OF WORKING 

OR, HELPFUL HINTS TO SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL WORKERS OF ALL KINDS 

By Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D. 
232 pp. Cloth, $1.00 



The new edition contains a chapter on the Relation of the Pastor to 
the Sunday School, a supplementary chapter on The Blackboard (illus- 
trated), and one on the Home Department. Everybody should have 
this book. It covers every phase of Sunday-school work in a clear, 
instructive manner, and cannot fail to be of marked benefit to every 
worker. It has received the highest commendations from the relig- 
ious press and the leading Sunday-school men. Below we give a 
proof of them. 

" The appearance of a really helpful manual for Sunday-school teachers 
or superintendents is a noteworthy event. Dr. Schauffler has given us the 
ripe results of his experience as superintendent and a teacher of teachers. He 
takes up the various phases of a superintendent's work, and shows what 
constitutes success, how success is often lost, and how it may be won." — 
S. S. Times. 

"This is a capital book. So far as the teacher and the method go, it 
leaves nothing unsaid. Dr. Schauffler's book is the very best book for 
teachers, and on teacher's methods, that we have seen." — The Independent, 
New York. 

'f It unlocks the door to the treasure-house of Sunday-school success." — 
F. N. Peloubet, D. D. 

" The best all-around book for a Sunday-school worker I know of." — 
Marion Lawrence, Sec'y Ohio State S. S. Association. 

" Cannot fail to be of value in the hands of all Sunday-school workers." 
— TV. H. Hall, Sec'y of Conn. State S. S. Association. 

"Dr. A. F. Schauffler, who is widely known as one of the most expert 
and distinguished Sunday-school men of our time, has prepared a book en- 
titled ' Ways of Working.' 

As the title suggests, it is a statement of methods, and abounds in prac- 
tical suggestions concerning all departments of Sunday-school work, the 
duties of every officer, and all particulars which are likely to suggest them- 
selves. It is based upon long and varied personal experience and observa- 
tion. It is written in a clear, simple, telling fashion, and will take rank at 
once in Sunday-school literature as a standard publication." — The Congre- 
gationalist. 



W. A. WILDE COMPANY 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO 



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